Resistance

Hi there! Welcome new subscribers from the MNA Resolve 2020 Conference AND from my own webcast series Storytelling September.

“Most of us have two lives. the life we live, and the unloved life within us. Between the two stands Resistance.”

- Steven Pressfield, The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles

Sometimes a book title just reaches out fr0m the shelf and throat punches you. I read it much like I’d inhale a bag of cheddar cheese Kettle Chips at the end of a long run. I got to the end and went back to page 1 and started it again. Essentially, I hit “rewatch” on this one. I recommend.

Pressfield defines Resistance quite broadly as the force that keeps you from doing the hard work you need to do to make your idea of change happen. It could be fear, procrastination, your job, basically every single excuse you use to keep from pursuing that path.

Resistance is a force, an energy, and it thrives on those things. But if you show up and “do the work,” like a gremlin, Resistance will shrivel up and die like in that commercial I used to see as a kid when the cleaning agent came in and killed the animated bacteria and they throw their arms up and run, writhing in misery for the drain where they disappear.

Until the next morning, when Resistance shows up again.

Here is what I think. It’s so much easier and comfortable to stay with the status quo. I thought about that early this morning when my alarm went off at 5 am so I could get mentally prepared for an 8 am virtual presentation to a few hundred people on using story to change the world. I could have been cozy in bed instead with no butterflies in my belly. I thought about how I could be out doing a run with friends on that beautiful morning instead of doing my best to project energy through a laptop propped on a shoebox, smiling into a camera lens pretending it’s eye contact with people I haven’t met before.

Our job is to be warrior-like in our approach. Control what we can, show up every day, and do our work with blinders on, not letting others distract us from our path. (this is the path I’ve been talking about - the one that looks like this google map that hasn’t fully downloaded. We know where we are, and we know where we want to be. We are just not sure how to get there.

Do you think Tom Oehler is wasting his time looking at the drop as he rides through the Strudelkopf in the image above? I’m pretty sure he is ten thousand percent focused on the path...

What is your unlived life and how is Resistance showing up for you? Hit reply. I really want to know.

Take care out there,