Your resistance to progress will ruin you

GISELLE P HUDSON

If you’ve been waiting on a sign to determine whether you are ready to do the thing you’ve always wanted to do – today’s the day.

I’m here to tell you: It’s time.

You’ve been spending quite some time in rehearsal. Today is the day to emerge from the curtains that block your stage to the world.

Why have you been so resistant to the call of your soul?

Why do you doubt yourself so much that you keep searching for more answers and more ideas before you can start?

I always know when a client has touched on something that is important to them. Their posture changes from slightly slumped to fully erect. Their eyes brighten up and they have a magical smile on their face as if they’ve got a juicy secret they can’t wait to share. During a recent coaching session, I was examining priorities with a client, and she was wondering about her extracurricular activities and whether she should stop them for the time being – at least until she got clear about what she really wanted to do. When she talked about a particular activity though, I saw her change as I described just now and I suggested to her that she keep on doing that activity.

Susan Biali MD author and health and happiness researcher shares her own experience and illustrates why even seemingly unimportant activities are in fact necessary.

“I attended a presentation in New York on a yummy topic: Do it for love and money. Deanna Zandt was one of the speakers, and she emphasised the importance of reading Steven Pressfield's classic book, The War of Art. She specifically referred to one section which urged you to ask: What is the one thing I would still do, if I was the last person left on earth?

"I was surprised by my answer. I would grab my flamenco shoes and find the nearest large theater. When I lived in Puerto Vallarta, I was given not one but two gorgeous hotel theaters to practice my dancing in. Free of charge, for hours at a time. I would dance until I could hardly walk. If I was the last person on earth, I'd want my own theater again and would dance for hours.

"Over the past year, I'd been letting my dancing slide. I only occasionally made it to dance classes and practiced even less. I'd decided for now my writing and coaching work were my priority.

"According to Pressfield's test, I was making a grave mistake by letting dancing languish. Not that flamenco is my most important contribution to humanity, but it's an essential part of me and needs to have its place. Something inside me withers if I'm not dancing, and I was ignoring that.”

You may have some area in your life that you feel compelled to change. You might be contemplating a career change; perhaps you finally decided to lose weight; maybe there’s a screenplay you are considering to write. Whatever it is, as Susan says, “That 'something' you know with every cell in your body that you need to do, but can't seem to get yourself to do.”

In the War of Art, author Steven Pressfield writes, it's "any act that rejects immediate gratification in favour of long-term growth, health or integrity."

According to Pressfield, there is a malignant presence that exists to block you. It rises up against you to stop you from doing what you most need to do. He calls this force resistance. As Pressfield puts it: "The more important a call or action is to our soul's evolution, the more resistance we will feel toward pursuing it."

Dr Biali asks a sobering question: “Can you think of times when you had a great opportunity — a chance at that 'big break' you wanted more than anything else — and you totally blew it? I mean spectacularly screwed it up?”

This is not the time to back down. This is the time to do that thing now!

Because, as Pressfield writes in his follow-up book, Do The Work, when you beat resistance and move into whatever it is that you need to do, another mystical force comes along beside you called assistance, and this is where the magic begins.

As author Donna Ashworth says in her piece titled It’s Time: “It’s time to stop the madness of comparison and the ridicule of schedule and conformity and start experiencing the joys that a life free of containment and guilt, can bring.”

Are you ready to live fully - this one precious life that you’ve been given?

It's time!

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