Embracing Resistance and Becoming Friends with Failure

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Hi friends!

A few months ago I read the War of Art by Steven Pressfield. I’d been hearing about it for a few years but never got myself to actually read it, until then. The concepts in this book are somewhat simple but I found it to be super inspiring for my business, personal, and spiritual life.

So, what I want to talk about today is how you can embrace resistance and learn to use it to know when something is right for you and how you can stop letting fear hold you back from pursuing your dreams.

What is resistance? Resistance is the metaphysical enemy of our conscious minds, always pushing us to give up, give in, and do what’s easy.

“ “Resistance is always lying. Resistance is full of shit.” ”

— Steven Pressfield

I love to talk about the difference between our ego and our intuition. Our intuition is pure love and our ego is fear. Resistance is a huge aspect of our ego because our ego wants to preserve and protect our physical human experience. It was created when we were cavemen to keep us alive. It alerts our fight or flight system and stops us from putting ourselves in “danger”. This was beneficial back then but in today’s modern, western world it is not usually needed for physical preservation. Instead, it now turns on when we have a perceived threat through mental and emotional stress and now it usually stays turned on since many are under chronic mental/emotional stress with work, finances, and home life. Having our fight or flight system chronically turned on not only keeps us from seeing where we need to go clearly but it also presents a scary array of health issues. This is why mindfulness practices that calm our nervous system are so essential in our modern world.

If when we are faced with resistance we can drop back into our bodies and our energy, we can slow down enough to decipher the meaning behind the resistance that has come up. Most of the time this resistance is, as SP says “full of shit” and it is holding us back from something that will actually bring us closer to our goals and dreams.

Resistance doesn’t like change and it doesn’t like the unknown, but to create a full and exciting life you have to get out of your comfort zone, you have to push and challenge yourself, and you have to be able to flow with and get excited by change.

A great personal example of resistance is this blog. I have a goal of growing my brand and honing my voice so that I can reach and serve more people. Almost every time I sit down to write a blog or record a podcast I feel resistance come in. I start to think about all of the other things that “I need to do”: how I need to answer emails or vacuum my house or how I should probably go move my body or eat a snack. While I’ve definitely become more comfortable with sharing my voice there is still always a little bit of fear that it won’t resonate or help anyone and that I’m wasting my time. That resistance is feeding off my fear to try and convince me that there are 10 other things that I should do instead of sitting down to write or record. Now, if I were to let this resistance come in and convince me of that, I would never get any content out. I’d never have even launched my blog or podcast or Youtube channel begin with and if I don’t do that, then my dreams will never have even a chance to come to fruition.

Now, let’s talk about failure!

We’ve all heard the quote “you miss every shot you don’t take”.

Failure is your friend. When we can begin to see failure as a positive, learning experience the whole world opens up.

You get to choose what kind of person you want to be in life. Are you going to let fear paralyze you and stay “comfortable” and stand back as you watch your peers chase after their dreams or are you going to get out there, risk discomfort, risk failure, and chase your dreams? If you don’t go after something, there is zero chance of you achieving it, simple as that. You have to get uncomfortable to actually be comfortable. Comfort is a facade. If you choose to stay “comfortable” instead of going for what you actually, deep down want, you will eventually become unfulfilled, unhappy, and a shell of who you were actually meant to be. Now, I don’t know about you, but that does not sound comfortable to me.

So, learn to get comfortable with failure. Embrace it. Every time you fail, every time you get rejected, every time you feel judged or ridiculed, embrace it. Learn from it and then get your booty back out there and try again!

I want to encourage you, next time you feel resistance or fear coming in, to take a seat and close your eyes and drop into your body. Connect with the fear or resistance that is coming up, thank it for trying to protect you, and then ask your intuition to come in and help you to lead with love and inspiration.