Accepting the Unexpected

Boy, do I know a thing or two about resistance! It has been a common theme throughout my life. I often joke about how I would rather choose a dirt road over a paved road any day! And yes, I have traveled many dirt roads! I have been lost many times and felt I wasted precious time trying to find my way back. Of course, today I do not believe any time is ever really wasted, however, I really want to make sure that my life now is lived with the least amount of resistance. For one thing it is bloody exhausting!

I do not remember how or who recommended I read “the War of Art”, by Steven Pressfield, but it is one of those books I go back to and re-read often. I am usually stuck between the frame of mind of complete and total excitement of new things to come or totally overwhelmed with where I should start. You see I am not new to starting and owning my own business or carving out a new path, I have done this many times. I am also not afraid of failure either, as that is something, I am remarkably familiar with.

When you are doing the work of creating, developing and then incorporating that with “healing”,….as psychotherapist, there is this constant nagging at your nervous system of not being too salesy or looking like the traveling potion girl with a host of magic that will provide you with exactly the right fix for the right problem. I know that in this business it is never that simple. 

And then there are the “quackadoodles” out there filling up your newsfeed with video’s popping up in your face yelling at you “I have the key to happiness!” Why do these people feel that they always need to yell at you? I coined the term quackadoodles because I was trying to somehow make sense of all this marketing madness. Not to say that I am sure there are people who have something brilliant offer, but I just can’t get passed the yelling………maybe it is a trigger for me. I grew up with a yeller, so I try to stay clear!

Back to Steven Pressfield, he really is a genius about procrastination, or more accurately termed, “resistance”. I like the way he coined this as procrastination to me is another shaming label, and resistance is seen as something outside of ourselves that we have control over. I believe we must have received the same degree as I know that I am also an expert in this area……. however, winning at procrastination is not something I have ever felt I was entitled to. In his book, Pressfield asks the reader, “ If you were the last person on earth, would you still do what you do”? If your thing was writing, music, art, or sports? And if no one could see it, would you still do it? Who would you be if no one were looking? 

 Today much of us are acutely aware of the benefits of doing that deep dive into defining our ‘self”. Some of us are really good at it, or it seems that way. Practicing our daily yoga, praying, vision quests, doing our morning pages (as described by The Artist Way, Julia Cameron), and fasting. Many believe these are practices necessary for seeking the Self. As Pressfield states, “The Self is our deepest being”.

“Most of us have two lives. The life we live and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands the resistance.”

– Steven Pressfield

 I have talked about the importance of self-reflection and really putting time into examining our life. What does this mean to you? Who do you want to be?

 Our resistance to being more of yourself may also be part of our fear and worry of imperfections. Lately I have heard a few people talking about imperfect beginnings. Our creative beginnings’ will never be perfect and likely never will our creative endings……but they will have begun. So today let us begin. Let us dive into being more of our self, our truest self. The self who would do it no matter who was watching because this is who you were meant to be.