{}

I recently took a VACATION. It was hard to unplug with a launch going on but I made sure that I did DAILY.

Last week one of my clients came to me worried because she was new to the Mastermind Program and she was struggling with completing the first assignment: reach out to people you know, tell them what you are doing and ask them for their advice and referrals.

We’d created a draft email for her to send. She knew exactly what to say. All she needed to do was copy, paste and hit send. And she was still struggling to do it.

Can you relate? There’s something incredibly simple you know you need to do in your business in order to take the next step forward. And for whatever reason, you can’t seem to make yourself do it?

You procrastinate. You find other things to do that feel more “doable.” Suddenly your friend/kids/partner “need” you. Or you get suddenly sick or your allergies act up and you can’t sit at your computer. Next thing you know, your bathroom is clean and your laundry is done when you haven’t touched them in weeks. But the thing that’s most important to moving you forward? Still at the top of the new ‘To Do List’ even though it never gets done.

I get it. I’ve been there myself. This is what is known as “Resistance.”

It’s easy to beat yourself up when Resistance has taken hold. But I’m going to invite you to do something different if this is what you are experiencing. There is a gift in Resistance. As Steven Pressfield writes in his book Do The Work (a must-read if you are starting your first business), Resistance points the way to what you most need to do:

“We can navigate by Resistance, letting it guide us to that calling or purpose that we must follow before all others.”

He goes on to write,

“Rule of thumb: The more important a call or action is to our soul’s evolution, the more Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it.”

Doing what you need to do to have the privilege of living your purpose isn’t always easy. It’s the stuff you least want to do that most needs doing sometimes.

I like to call this “Doing the big dishes first.” After a party when you’ve got a ton of dishes to do, if you do the big ones first, it frees up room in the sink and everything seems more doable. The same is true with the thing you least want to do. Get it done. It will free up the mental and emotional bandwidth to make everything else doable.

One thing I want to add here – as women entrepreneurs, we often feel like readying ourselves to “just do it” is too masculine. It doesn’t honor our feelings and process enough. And I’m going to counter that.

It’s actually more feminine to feel it all as you go through the process of doing it anyways (fear, self-doubt, hope, discomfort, uncertainty) than to feel your fear and let it stop you until you feel a different way. (How will you ever feel different on the highway of “getting it done” if you pulled over and parked at the rest stop called Fear and Resistance?)

When something is outside of your comfort zone it is normal and right to feel fear. The mature business owner asks herself to feel the sensations and keep moving daily.

To make this more actionable, I like to chunk this. In situations like my client’s, you can baby step your way through it like this:

1) Make a list of all the people that need to get the email. (Celebrate)

2) Set up the email in your drafts folder to each of them. (Celebrate)

3) Phone a friend and scream, cry and talk gibberish while you hit send repeatedly until it’s done. (Celebrate)

It’s ideal if you set a finite amount of time in which you will do each step so the mind and body know that the discomfort has an end point and will not go on forever. And if it’s REALLY hard, celebrating in between each step will encourage you to keep going.

Have you ever struggled with Resistance? How else have you moved through it? I’d love to hear about – leave me a note in the comments!

Comments

comments

December 2013 Issue