Now that you have an understanding of what resistance looks like, it’s good to know why it shows up.

Steven Pressfield, author of The War of Art: Break Through the blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles, explains that “the more fear we feel about a specific enterprise, the more certain we can be that that enterprise is important to us and to the growth of our soul. That’s why we feel so much Resistance. If it meant nothing to us, there’d be no Resistance.”

(You’ll notice, Steven always capitalizes Resistance. We think he does so for the same reason we make it bold. It’s important - really important - and deserves that respect.)

He goes on to say, “The more you love your art/calling/enterprise, the more important its accomplishment is to the evolution of your soul, the more you will fear it and the more Resistance you will experience facing it.”

Right now, you’re probably saying, “Ahhh yes, exactly.”
“This explains why I haven’t moved forward in pursuing my passion for _______ . It’s because it is so incredibly important to me. This is the reason I say I want to do ________ more than anything in the world, but I haven’t actually done anything towards achieving it. Damn you, resistance!”

“Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance.”
- Steven Pressfield

Steven continues to hit the nail on the head by saying, “Any act that rejects immediate gratification in favor of long-term growth, health, or integrity. Or, expressed another way, any act that derives from our higher nature instead of our lower. Any of these will elicit Resistance.”

As we’ve said before, living in the grey isn’t easy. There is not always a quick payoff.  There are many times when creating a grey life is in direct competition with a high-paying, black-and-white job/life. Will you choose immediate gratification over long term growth, health, integrity, happiness? In other words, will you let resistance get the best of you?

 

[Image: Sunni Brown]

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