HOW AWARE ARE you of resistance? That inner voice that lets you know you are wasting your time doing what you’re doing, so cave in and give up?

You’re aware of being tired and not getting enough sleep. Aware you’re hungry or thirsty – warm or cold – in need of money. You do something about it. Why not be mindful of resistance?

Steven Pressfield and Seth Godin are two experts on resistance that I respect. They give it life.

Resistance has other names: inner critic – lizard brain – shadow – narrow self – bully – heckler – gremlin.

Resistance shows up as fear, self-doubt, being overly hard on yourself, procrastinating, complaining, playing around with deadlines, putting things on hold, unprepared, writing too much, acting casual, leaping in without a plan, steeping yourself in irritation, resentment, pressure, and finding many other things to do instead of sitting down, producing and shipping the valuable work you want to do for people who are waiting for your genius.

How can you resist resistance?

Understand it. Study it. Know how and when resistance works in you.

Even now, as I’m writing this post, my gremlin is hammering away at my work. Telling me this subject is too big for me to write about. I put it off for three days. I have pieces of paper beside me with disorganized notes I’m pulling together to make sense for other people reading this. That’s resistance working in me.

It’s fierce, BUT that’s when I know I’m on to something important, and I start having fun, gently sending my gremlin away and moving ahead at full speed to complete and share my work.

Understanding resistance is a huge opportunity to know yourself – what works for you and against you.

What can you learn from resistance?

How can you befriend your heckler?

Once you see resistance and know what it is about, you’ll have a choice – to yield to resistance or create.

I often think the Fear of Trying is more intense than the Fear of Failure or Success.

Here’s a poem I use in coaching to help people understand resistance.

Gremlin Poem by Lou Tice

I am Fear.

I am the menace that lurks in the paths of life, never visible
to the eye but sharply felt in the heart.

I am the father of despair, the brother of procrastination,

The enemy of progress, the tool of tyranny.

Born of ignorance and nursed on misguided thought, I have
darkened more hopes, stifled more ambitions, shattered
more ideals and prevented more accomplishments than
history could record.

Like the changing chameleon, I assume many disguises.

I masquerade as caution.

I am sometimes known as doubt or worry.

But whatever I’m called, I am still Fear, the obstacle of achievement.

I know no master but one; its name is Understanding.

I have no power but what the human mind gives me,
and I vanish completely when the light of Understanding
reveals the facts as they really are, for I am really nothing.

Thanks – Michael (he, him)

Please share my Daily with your tribes.
This also matters – Gremlin Talk.

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