Forgive me if you’re sick of me making reference to Michael Hyatt. He’s clearly an influencer in my life right now and if that annoys you, maybe this isn’t the blog for you! Michael recently did a podcast called How to Overcome Resistance that I found helpful. You can listen to the whole thing here or skip down to the summary.
What is resistance?
Michael brings up a subject that I face on a regular basis and I’m sure you do too. Resistance’ according to Hyatt is, “that invisible, destructive force that opposes you every time you try to start a new project or make an improvement in any area of your life.”
Sound familiar? Know why I’m bringing it up? We all face it.
“You might not experience resistance if you decide to eat dessert but you will experience it if you decide to go on a diet.”
True words, no?
How to overcome it
Michael says we typically have 3 responses to to resistance. They are fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Also sound familiar? Hyatt does a great job in his podcast through telling a story of how he persisted in getting one of his books bought by a skeptical publisher after tons of rejections, only to have it hit the best seller list. He advises a response for each of those ugly responses: to start, focus and finish.
- I’ve heard this before in reading The Now Habit. The response to fear is procrastination and the response to procrastination needs to be: to start.
- The typical response to uncertainty is distraction and the counter-measure needs to be to focus. Remember when I was doing Nanowrimo last November? In a millisecond, without thinking, I learned that could open a new tab and be on Facebook without thinking. It’s a habit I have unwittingly developed for the moment when my brain has a lull. So thanks to the recommendation of my friend Diane, I installed StayFocused in my browser and blocked Facebook and Twitter during my writing hours. It worked.
- The third response to resistance is to doubt (should I really be doing this?) and the counter-measure should be just to finish. Push-through. This is where going public with things helps, you have a bunch of people who you can turn to help you finish.
If you found this post helpful, I encourage you to listen to the whole podcast. He finishes the podcast by answering questions that his listeners have asked him.
Can you think of a time when you overcame resistance? I’d love to hear a story from you! Don’t be shy and leave it in the comments here.
