Resistance is Futile
Oh resistance... You are such a familiar friend. I can feel you in the tips of my fingers as I try to write. I feel you in my belly and chest holding on tight. I feel you in my distraction and I hear you in the stories inside my head.
Resistance is something that we all deal with, I know I do. As a matter of fact, I'm experiencing it right now as I attempt to write this article. I had a good laugh with my entrepreneur buddies this morning when they asked me what I was procrastinating and I said "Writing an article on resistance". As always, my friends, I teach what I need to learn.
In an email I sent to a friend the other day I wrote "I just have to wade through the resistance to get to the sparkly bits..." Those sparkly bits are in all of us so your job is to figure out how to activate yours. My sparkly bits shine the brightest when I'm dancing, laughing, creating, facilitating groups and working with clients.
So, if the sparkly bits are so darn sparkly, why do we resist? Are we afraid that others won't appreciate our sparkle? Have we forgotten just how truly sparkly we are? Do we not feel that we deserve to shine so bright?
For me, when I come up against that resistance, there's a palpable feeling of time travel back to my childhood, a time when resistance and boredom ruled. When being the smallest and feeling left out was what it felt like to be me. When I hit those pockets of resistance the feeling is so familiar it must be the truth. The thing is, I'm not a little kid anymore and I know that I can choose to sit on the sidelines or I can choose to join in and it is just that, a choice!
This feeling of "truth" can crop up in other ways too. I've seen it with my clutter clients when they've been rocking it in their lives, stretching and growing and changing until they notice that their desk is messy and suddenly the messy desk is the only thing they can see. They become the story of the messy desk and all the other accomplishments and awesomeness fade away because all that matters is the messy desk.
The way that I experience this is that it feels like a wall, but instead of the wall being somewhere out there, the wall is actually on the inside. I'm not running into it, but rather I'm being snapped back to some younger smaller version of myself who truly believes that the messy desk is the capital T Truth about who I am. Then the stories start "Who are you to think that you deserve to be in a happy relationship/work at a fulfilling job/lead a rich spiritual life/travel to India/start your own business etc...?"
I'm sure there are many reasons this happens, after all the wall is comfortable, it's familiar and on some level feels right. Somewhere inside, the wall and the stories it tells feel like the truth. The trick is to acknowledge the wall in a kind and compassionate way and decide to go back to stretching and growing anyway.
It's like an elastic band, the further you stretch, the more it hurts when you get snapped back into the wall, but you know what? One day you will stretch that elastic band so far that it will have no choice but to snap and then there you'll be in a happy relationship,/working at a fulfilling job/leading a rich spiritual life/on a plane to India/opening the doors to your very own business.
There's sometimes a story inside that says "I can't!" and the only way to write a new one is to say "I CAN!" shake the mud off your boots and get dancing.
Have fun finding your favorite way to sparkle and remember if you feel that muddy, icky, sticky place, or you find yourself up against that wall you're on the right track, you just have to keep on moving and as soon as you can say twinkle toes, there you'll be!