Resistance.
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In “The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles,” Steven Pressfield says, “There’s a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don’t, and the secret is this: It’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write.
“What keeps us from sitting down is Resistance.”
As a writer, these words resonate within me. I know Resistance and every day, I meet Her within myself as I sit down to write. She’s very good at convincing me to do anything except what I say I’m going to do.
Her tools are shiny and distracting: Oh, I have email I need to check. Oh, I’m thirsty; I need a drink. What about a snack? Must go to the restroom now. Let’s just check the news real quick. Hey, what’s that sound?
By the time I’m finished with the distractions She throws at me, my “me-time,” the time I have set aside to write, is gone.
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Pressfield uses the analogy of war for a few reasons throughout his book, the play on the title of Sun Tzu’s famous work being the most obvious.
According to the Google dictionary: “If you make war on someone or something that you are opposed to, you do things to stop them succeeding.” Pressfield’s book is set up to teach the reader how to keep Resistance from succeeding in his or her own life.
For me, that’s exactly what I need.
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In the past few weeks, I have declared “war” on my Resistance.
It’s not that I don’t want to understand why I feel this way. It’s not that I don’t recognize that sometimes there are very valid reasons (subconscious or not) for my Resistance to rear Her head. Sometimes it’s simply human nature.
You see, the problem is: She’s succeeding.
And, until I get a grasp on controlling my Resistance, it doesn’t matter why She does what She does. If Resistance is in control, I lose. Period.
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In the next few articles, I would like to help you get in touch with your own Resistance and learn to get it under your control. I’ll be working with this right along with you.
I will be using the first two parts of “The War of Art” by Steven Pressfield as a field manual to help us first recognize the Resistance within us, what causes it and what forms it takes. We have to know what Resistance is, in order to stop it from succeeding–She can be extremely tricky.
We will talk about ways to overcome that Resistance, to get our lives under our control rather than letting Resistance have free rein.
And, once we understand methods to control Resistance, we will talk about getting to know and understand our own personal Resistances, to get an understanding of our own triggers and how we can determine what our Resistance is trying to tell us.
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My mind is already throwing up Resistance to this article. Already!
My Resistance is asking me all sorts of questions: is anyone going to read this? Is anyone going to care? Am I the best person to write these articles? Surely there’s someone better, someone who’s been through all of this and who can hold my hand while I’m writing? What if I say the wrong thing? Why not just go do something else? Check Facebook? Your email (even though you’ve already checked it a few minutes ago)?
