As I’m gearing up to launch my fourth book. I have spent a lot of hours tying up the loose ends to bring this book to completion.
I’ve been writing it for 3 years now. So it’s time to take it over the finish line.
I created a spreadsheet with a list of things I have to do. Two weeks ago, there was a task that was a few days late. Each day that passed afterwards, I kept telling myself “You need to send out those emails.”
I kept pushing out the task, 3 days, 5, then 7. Eventually, I spent a few minutes on the task , typed up the email, and sent it out. Once I sent it, I thought “that wasn’t that bad, why didn’t I just do this earlier.”
Within a few minutes, I got a response. I could have gotten that response two weeks ago.
This is a reminder that regardless of what you do, resistance is always persistent and you have to work to overcome it.
The big resistor
We procrastinate, overthink, and intentionally distract ourselves.
We don’t need other people to participate in this. We can do it all by ourselves.
Time to finish that plan?
“I’d work on it in a few minutes.”
Minutes turn to hours. Hours turn into days. Then months.
Time to send out that email?
“Hmm, let me edit it one more time.”
Time to design the package for your product?
“Let me just hop on IG and see what’s popping real quick.”
45 minutes later. No package.
The agents of resistance have come for you.
In the book, THE WAR OF ART, the author, Steven Pressfield described resistance as the unseen veil between the life you’re living and the “unlived life” within.
So many of us have repressed little activities that we want to do. It could be a business, organizing events, or singing lessons. Some time in your formation, probably when you were going from your late teens to early twenties, you signed an unwritten agreement with the people around you, saying something like: “I’m becoming an independent adult, I will forgo anything that is child-like that puts me at odds with my fellow growing adults”
Then you get to your 30s, 40s, and you start to wonder what life is actually about.
Perhaps that child-like joy that you’ve repressed is causing unhappiness. It has been pressure-cooked into a thick cake of resistance.
That resistance is blocking you from what you really want to do.
It’s always there. It never disappears.
But here’s the good news, you can use it to your advantage.
Since resistance will do everything in its will to pull you away from that important thing you really want to do. You just have to do one thing: Go the opposite direction.
Whenever you feel resistance, just take one step in the opposite direction. That’s it.
The more steps you take, the better you get at it.
Overcoming resistance is an internal battle with your ego.
3 Steps to Overcome Creative Resistance
When I sat down to write this section of this letter in the morning on Wednesday, everything in my body wanted to do something else.
“I should probably check my emails”
“Have I really thought through this entire letter?”
“Am I being repetitive?”
Ahhh stop it. Just write.
This happens all the time. I’ve written a few books and numerous blogs and posts, you’d think I just knock these things out. No. Still the same doubt. Still the same self-talk.
I’ve only learned to recognize it for what it is and just do what I need to do regardless. It helps that I set aside 30-minutes each morning to this task. To overcome resistance you have to recognize it and follow through, knowing it happens to everyone and it never really goes away.
When you do, you’d take steps towards your goals, you’ll have your own internal scorecard that’s important to you, and you’ll build more meaning in your life.
Here are three things I think about to overcome creative resistance.
1. Recognize Resistance
You are the judge and the critic.
Your body and mind is the court of law and it’s all a theater of who and what is right or wrong. Whenever you want to do anything that requires some type of growth, there is a voice that either judges or criticizes what you’re about to do.
These growth activities include:
- starting an entrepreneurial venture
- doing any sort of creative or artistic work
- improving your health
- elevating your moral consciousness or spirituality
Whenever you want to partake in these activities, there will always be a voice that says:
“oh come on, what use is that?”
Venturing into the unknown makes you do something that most of us don’t like, which is: having to let go of your need for immediate validation.
Whenever you want to start something new, recognize resistance when it shows up because just knowing the internal judge and the critic is half the battle.
2. Do the 90-minute act
Show up and do the work.
No one is going to do your work for you. Some people have coasted through life, playing the game to get into managerial roles so they can pass off their work to other people. Fair. Your corporate antics will only take you so far.
Unfortunately, when it comes to your personal life, no one is going to do your work for you.
For that, you just have to show up and do it. The way I do this is deciding on one task that would move me closer to my goal. Setting a 90-minute timer and performing that task until the time’s up and then taking a break.
After taking a break, you can do another 90-minute time block. You don’t have to spend the entire day or weekend overthinking. Thinking is work. It expends energy too.
Think. Decide. Act.
3. Find Your Pace
Slow is smooth and smooth is fast.
That was a quote I came across in a book I read last year called, EFFORTLESS. It really resonated with me and goes against some of the narrative in our hyper-productive world about the need to do back-breaking work to achieve our goals.
In fact, the people that live a more fulfilling life are the ones that take action but understand their limits.
They know that the work and the effort is what matters. The outcome is most times out of their hands. To give their effort the best chance, they pace themselves. They don’t do work that they can’t in a day that they can’t recover from on that day.
Similar to athletes, the best are the ones that have routines that help them recover quickly.
I’m saying all this to instill that you need rest and sleep to overcome your daily resistance. It’s hard to do creative work and build your business with a clear mind, when you’re constantly low on sleep.
Pace yourself.
The battle is within…
The resistance that’s stopping you from achieving your goal is internal. It’s your ego.
It’s not your partner or the friend that didn’t respond to you or the colleague that shut your idea down. Don’t take it so personally what others do. What’s more personal is the constant dialogue going on in your head.
To overcome this resistance, you need to recognize it when it shows up, face it and do your work regardless, and get some rest so you can pace yourself for the marathon.
As the late great Nipsey Hussle said: The Marathon Continues.
Keep it going.
Yours truly,
Nifemi
