Resistance

Here I am, a mere one day into my 30 day writing journey, and I am already finding a million other things I could be doing rather than writing.

Isn’t that interesting… because at the peak of my inspiration and excitement, I knew this was exactly what I needed to do.

Steven Pressfield unpacks this deeply, simply, profoundly, in his book, The War of Art.

He calls the seemingly invisible yet ever-pervasive force our Resistance.

And the thing with Resistance is, it can sense exactly when something is important to us.

It knows when we want to change.

It knows the precise actions, habits, mindsets that we most want to adopt — this is where it starts to come into the picture.

Because that’s the ultimate role of Resistance: self-preservation. Sure, we may be happier, more productive, feel more fulfilled and in control of our lives if we commit to waking up earlier as a morning person.. but then that means we have to change. And change requires a dying of the old self. Let’s face it, if there’s one mission each and every creature has on this planet, it’s self-preservation. Our egoic self is no different.

So here I am, day 2, and it’s already 12:20am because I have found 12 other things to do with my time over the last 4 hours. I mean, it’s honestly amazing how it just takes an important project, or the knowledge that someone will be reading my words, to suddenly rearrange and deep clean my entire apartment. Works like a charm every time.

So I’m not even going to try to perfect this one. I will fight back against the voice in my head saying just wait until the morning to add and edit it. Because that’s not what this is about — this is about me committing to this new act. To facing Resistance. To putting more of me out there. In her raw form and all.