Don't let go. When you are there, where you need to be. Doing, what you need to do. Don’t let go. No matter what. Ignore the voice that says that we have it under control. Ignore the voice that says but that will take only a minute. No matter what. It’s
Slow down. Yes, there is so much you want to do. Yes, everything is important and has to be done now. Yes, you know you haven’t been able to do anything lately. Instead of speeding up, slow down. Snail pace. Extremely slow. Feel your breath. More slow. Ignore the urges. Let
Plan to Do less. This puts us on the hook. If all we have to do today is a 20 min task, then we can’t possibly have a good reason not to do it. Making a long to-do list is another form of hiding. We know we are not going to do everything
Not ready yet. This is the most common reason/excuse I hear for someone not taking an action towards their dreams and desires. I think this is Resistance’s most potent weapon. We believe that somehow, some time in the future we’ll be ready. The stars will be aligned and the hens
Trust and doubt. Most of us have been trained to doubt. Doubt ourselves, doubt others, doubt everyone. The idea is to keep oneself safe. To avoid heartbreak and other losses. But minimising loss is very different from maximising profit. The advantages of trust, both for ourselves and others, far outweigh the safety precautions
Symptoms Guilt. Anxiety. Stress. Tension. Boredom. Fake. Fraud. Imposter. Talking and not doing. Being an a**hole Hurting others. Blaming others. Judging others. Hiding. Keeping myself safe. Doing and being Evil. And on and on it goes… When I listen to Resistance, this is what I become.
The process of getting back to focus. We all have tasted it. The laser sharp focus that led us to accomplish seemingly impossible tasks. Maybe, it was the night before the exam which we were about to flunk. Or it was an impossible deadline which we had to meet. But, most of the times, it alludes us.
Why Resistance? Many times when we are struggling with procrastination and self-doubt, we tend to ask ‘Why? Why does resistance even exist?’ It’s easy to question the rules of the game as that saves us from the challenge of even playing the game. So, why does it exist. One, it doesn’
Are you busy? One of the games that Resistance plays is to make us feel ‘busy’. The irony is that when we feel ‘busy’, we rarely get anything done. The reason we are busy is that we are avoiding that one thing that needs to be done. It would make sense, then, to
Later. I think what we need to learn is to put ourselves on the hook. Because once we are on the hook, once there is no way out, then we will figure a way forward. Then we will deliver. Resistance stops us from putting ourselves on the hook. Later is almost
The perfect yesterday. One of my favourite Beatles song is ‘Yesterday’. The nostalgia of yesterday can concoct very strong emotions. We feel that we can touch it. But, perfect and yesterday, they both are indicators of a fixed mindset. If it’s perfect, it can’t become better. If it’s yesterday, you
It's not about me. This blog. My work. My organisation. My team. They are not about me. Seth talks about it in Practice and Pressfield mentioned about it in War of Art. But I did not get it then. When I make it about me, I make it precious. I stop being generous. I
It will get better... … not with time but through action. One action at a time. One thing at a time. That’s how Resistance loses its power. Each act of shipping, of showing up, of showing courage, takes us forward. We don’t ship when we are ready, we become ready when we ship.
Who's incharge? When Resistance is incharge, we are residing in ResistanceLand. All choices are made by Resistance and we simply tag along. But it is possible for us to be incharge instead. And for that, we might need to gather all our courage to simply say ‘No’. We can say ‘No’ to
ResistanceLand Welcome to Hell. Pressfield describes it as “You can’t get no satisfaction. You are bored. You are restless. You feel unloved and unlovable”. It’s a slippery slope. The moment I think I am in control, I start slipping. The more I slip, the more likely it becomes that
Checklists. I had read Atul Gawande’s book, Checklist Manifesto, around a year ago. I started using Checklists vigorously after reading the book. That made me highly effective as well as efficient. Over the months, my brain, mostly resistance, convinced me to let go of the lists and trust the brain
Lack of trust. An employer doesn’t trust the employee. They look at them as an expense because the moment they get a better offer, they’d leave the job. Hence, they do not invest in them, whether financially or emotionally. An employee doesn’t trust the employer. The moment they find a
Tradeoffs in the mind We seem to be in a perpetual negotiation in our mind. As if there are 2 sides to it. As if by not writing today’s blog, I am going to get something in return. These are lose-lose negotiations. The only way out of them is to not participate in
Boring and repetitive. The quest for novelty can be a hindrance in the quest for consistency. We seek novelty for the tension that it creates. We don’t know how it’s going to turn out. But when we stop being consistent for the sake of novelty, we make the novelty even more
The buzz and the resistance. Yesterday, as part of the Creative’s Workshop at Akimbo, I listened to a conversation between Seth Godin and Gabe Anderson. They talked about the buzz you feel when you are committed to doing something. The buzz I felt just before I started typing this blog entry. That’s the
Don't think your way out of a rut… There’s a popular saying that goes like, “If you’re in a hole, stop digging”. Thinking is what gets us into a rut. The way out of it is never through thinking. Instead, action, despite all the resistance to it, despite you not feeling like it, despite your rational
Small losses... …are essential for big gains. The easiest way to avoid your creative work is to engage in other people’s urgencies. However, in order to do something meaningful, you would have to let go of many meaningless things. If all we do is to avoid the small losses, the big
The neutral gear. How do you get a car that’s going in the reverse direction to move forward? You put it in neutral first. Even to change the gear up, you need to go via neutral. It makes sense then to identify with our neutral state and learn how to get back
Finding our voice. There are two voices inside our head, the automatic one and the intentional one. The automatic one tends to take over the space most of the time. It makes us run on auto-pilot. But sometimes, when we become calm, when we act, we get a glimpse of the intentional voice.
Addicted to the past? Are we working on making our future better or are we busy paying off the past’s debt? Ironically though, the best way to pay off the past’s debt is to work on the future. Elon musk, Jeff Bezos are definitely future oriented. They are working on things that
