Navigating By Resistance

Do you feel resistance when you step into the water?

A hesitation, perhaps, to put your foot in?

A reluctance to jump?

And once you’ve entered the water and started writing, do you feel the page resisting the words that you try to write?

Do you feel the words themselves resisting you?

Resistance can take many forms.

In Steve Pressfield’s Do The Work! Overcome Resistance and get out of your own way, he explores some of the forms that resistance can take and how it can prevent you from getting your work done.

“Resistance cannot be seen, heard, touched, or smelled,” writes Pressfield, “But it can be felt. We experience it as an energy field radiating from a work-in-potential."

Resistance is a repelling force. It’s negative. Its aim is to shove us away, distract us, prevent us from doing our work.

And this:

“Resistance is insidious. Resistance will tell you anything to keep you from doing your work. It will perjure, fabricate, falsify; seduce, bully, cajole. Resistance is protean. It will assume any form, if that’s what it takes to deceive you.

Perhaps the most important thing to understand about resistance as you deal with it in your work is this:

“Like a magnetized needle floating on a surface of oil, Resistance will unfailingly point to true North–meaning that calling or action it most wants to stop us from doing.

“We can use this," writes Pressfield. “We can use this as a compass. We can navigate by resistance, letting it guide us to that calling or purpose that we must follow before all others."

Here's the rule of thumb that Pressfield suggests we follow: "The more important a call or action is to our soul’s evolution, the more resistance we will feel toward pursuing it."

For more information about Steve Pressfield and resistance, visit:
http://manvsdebt.com/do-the-work/
http://sarahjbray.com/2011/05/the-resistance-is-real-steven-pressfield-aint-lying/
http://ourbestversion.com/2011/03/the-enemy-uncovered-resistance-according-to-steven-pressfield-in-the-war-of-art/
http://emberarts.com/2011/10/steven-pressfield-and-the-resistance/

And for more info about Pressfield, visit his site:
http://www.stevenpressfield.com/the-war-of-art/