Michael Hyatt – Bucket List Journey

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.

Ever the cynic, I rarely had New Year’s Resolutions growing up. I was the ‘realist’ who could see the future and how quickly I would abandon my project and so I decided not to start it so I couldn’t fail at it. Sounds like a happy kid, right? What I did like was new beginnings. So various times throughout the year I would feel inspired to start new things. I didn’t want to feel stuck to January. Only in the last few years have I attempted New Year’s Resolutions.

I was reflecting on this time last year, which I spent some time planning my New Year’s Resolution. I actually managed to successfully do 10/12 months of my New Years Resolution which is an overwhelming success in my books! I took some time to think about why it ended up being the only major success in a Resolution I’ve ever had. It ended up lining up pretty well with these suggestions that I found in A New York TImes article called Be It Resolved by John Tierney, so I thought I’d share his tips instead since he’s way more credible than I am.

Set a single clear goal. Instead of resolving to “lose weight” or “eat healthier,” set a specific goal — say, lose a pound a week. And limit yourself to one big resolution at a time.
Pre-commit. Further bind yourself by e-mailing your goal to friends or posting it on Facebook.
Outsource. You can outsource self-control by sharing your progress with friends through Twitter posts about your weight or your workouts, or by making a formal contract at Web sites like stickK.com, [I’m looking at trying out the Lift app]
Keep track. Self-monitoring is vital to any kind of resolution, and new tools will do the grunt work for you.
Don’t Overreact to a Lapse. One reason dieters fail is a phenomenon formally known as “counterregulatory eating” — and informally as the “what the hell effect.” Once they lapse, they figure the day’s diet is blown anyway, so they go on to finish the whole carton of ice cream, thereby doing far more damage than the original lapse.
Tomorrow is another day. One of the cheeriest new findings from diet research comes from an experiment in which people had to resist a bowl of M&M’s. The ones who told themselves they could have the candy later had a much easier time than the ones who swore off M&M’s permanently.
Reward often. If you use willpower only to deny yourself pleasures, it becomes a grim, thankless form of defense. But when you use it to gain something, you can wring pleasure out of the dreariest tasks.