Fighting resistance is one of the hardest battles you can face in life, it’s also a fight to the death.

For some years I’ve been battling resistance without even realising I was doing it. Not fully understanding why I couldn’t motivate myself to get up and do the things that I wanted to do to fulfil my dreams. What demon is this that stops you doing what you love? Why do I feel like I have to wait for something to happen before I can start living the dream, even if the dream is to just start making music, or writing or painting. To just start!

You might be thinking, ‘what a plonker, why don’t you just do it?’ I can understand that, resistance isn’t fighting everyone, some people bash out tunes like their lives depend upon it, and it does.

Resistance is fear.

Resistance can pop up in many shapes and forms but it’s main guise is fear. Fear of success, fear of failure, fear of doing it wrong, fear of never doing it but never getting around to it despite countless attempts to ‘have a go’. So how can we give our selves a chance at living the life that we need and deserve?

We need to turn pro! As Steven Pressfield describes it in his book, ‘The War of Art’, which I’ve had for years, but only now managed to read (ironically), we will always battle resistance, but recognising it for what it is means we can start to predict its next move, the latest trick it has up its sleeve to prevent us from making the difference we have a right to make in the world.

What do you want to do?

Knowing that your calling is the most important thing to you and that you need to create and you need to make a difference can be enough to get things moving. We are by nature creative creatures and require an outlet. Some of us don’t even know what it is we are meant to be doing, others have no problem following and DOING what is required of them to make a success of themselves.

By success I mean to be pushing ourselves everyday to improve on our craft, because it is a craft, it’s something we have to dedicate our time, our lives to. Success is to keep working despite the results, it might not be a number 1 hit, it might not be good in any way, but it is finished, you have worked and worked until you can say this piece is finished. That is a success as far as I’m concerned. Putting in the time will reap its own rewards and what starts as the biggest learning curve of your life will turn into your daily routine where ego and self no longer matter, you are just getting this shit done, no matter what the cost.

We are are only here once, this is it, if we don’t act now we won’t evolve into what our potential is begging us to become and our resistance is trying to stomp out. We must create and we must conquer the resistance by recognising it for what it is. Resistance must be eliminated.

What’s your take on resistance? Are you a sufferer? I’d love to hear your stories on how you overcame resistance, or perhaps you are still struggling with it? Let me know in the comments box below.

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