Fighting Resistance - Part 2
"The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist."
Our first step in fighting resistance is acknowledging that it exists. Part of our problem in dealing with resistance is that resistance wants us to believe that it is all part of the process. As we talked about last week, resistance will rationalize anything we do - and we've got to be aware of these rationalizations if we want to fight resistance.
This, of course, is a lot easier said than done. In my head, all those rationalizations make perfect sense.
Of course, it would be better if I started tomorrow. I'll be in a better headspace.
Of course, I need to do more research before I start on this.
Of course, it's okay if I eat just one cookie, what harm will that do. Well, I guess I can have a few more. I already had one.
Our rationalizations feel rational at the time, yet we can look back on those decisions and know they weren't the right choice. Although to be fair, we are often looking back on those choices with rose-colored glasses. Which is why when we're presented with the same decision again in the future, we tell ourselves that, "well now the situation is different."
Yesterday I put off starting because I was just being lazy, but today I didn't get enough sleep, and I won't be able to focus. So yeah, starting tomorrow is the better choice.
Last time I ate too many cookies because I didn't care about self-control, this time, I'm going to be able to control myself.
When we believe we are free of resistance, we are at the greatest risk of succumbing to it. When we aren't aware that our rationalizations are just the whisperings of resistance, we're more likely to fall for those thoughts.
When we're able to identify we're feeling resistance, we can start doing something about it. When we let ourselves ignore its influence, we are just going to be pulled along by the current.
This means we need to have a clear plan about what we're going to do when we encounter resistance. And let's go over this one more time, we are going to experience resistance. That's step one. And I'm repeating this because this has been one of the hardest lessons for me to internalize.
It's that rationalization that this time is going to be different. That this time we're not going to let ourselves lose focus. That this time we're just going to sit down and do our work. That this time I'm going to have the motivation to follow through.
And with ADHD, this is dangerous thinking. We pretend that we're learning from our mistakes, but we're just setting ourselves up to fail in the same ways over and over again. It's frustrating. It makes us feel like we're never going to be able to get it. We think we know what we need to do, but we can't figure out how to do it.
And the truth of the matter is that things aren't going to be different this time. I'm still going to sit down at my desk and be tempted to play games instead. I'm still going to think of an idea that I want to do a little research on for just five minutes. And I'm still going to lose track of what I'm doing.
For the last month, I've been repeating a pattern of telling myself that I'm going to workout while my kids are napping. And yet, every afternoon when they go down for quiet time, I find myself rationalizing that this is my free time, and I should do something fun with that time. That the garage isn't cleaned up so I'd have to put stuff away first. That I'm too tired. And so I haven't followed through with those plans to workout.
And it's truly amazing how we convince ourselves that by changing nothing that we are going to have a different result. When we convince ourselves that we weren't trying hard enough last time, that's just one more of resistance's tricks.
Once we accept that we are going to be facing resistance, we can start developing strategies that will help us mitigate that resistance.
Our first step here is to define what it is we want to be doing. ADHD makes it easy to get distracted and getting back to what you were doing is only going to be made more difficult if you don't what that is.
I know it seems like we should be able to just sit down and work on what we're supposed to be working on, but part of the reason it's easy to get distracted is that we often don't put any parameters on that.
For example, let's take a look at what happens when I sit down to write. For a long time, I thought of writing as just one thing - putting text on a page. But that's only one piece of it. I typically break my writing into a few parts. First is a prewrite where I get all of my ideas down on the page, this can also include putting together a rough outline, but not always. This is also when I'll be doing most of my research. Once I've finished my prewrite, I'll jump into the whole words on the page thing. After I finish my first draft, I then drop my script into a program called Grammarly and do all of my editing there.
At first, this seemed like a lot of unnecessary steps for writing an episode. Why not just start in Grammarly and edit as I go?
The advantage comes from the fact that I know what I am specifically focusing on when I sit down to work. It's okay for me to wander off during the prewriting phase and do a little research if I'm not sure about a topic. I don't have to worry about sentence structure or creating a cohesive structure. Once I'm finished with the prewrite, I have everything I need to write my actual script. At this point, I'm not doing any more research, so I know that I'm off task if I pop open my web browser. And then, by making editing its own section, I allow myself to just focus on writing. Editing then allows me to go back and make sure everything flows together, and I can fix all my grammar and spelling mistakes (and usually there are quite a lot of those).
Last week, when we talked about resistance, we discussed how one of the easiest ways to fight resistance is to make starting easier. Breaking down our tasks into their component parts is a great way to make starting easier.
When we know what we need to do, we can set our intention and get going.
And setting our intention doesn't just have to be something we do in our heads. If we're finding ourselves frequently getting pulled away, it will probably be useful to write down that intention that we want to be working on. I have several stacks of sticky notes on my desk just for this purpose. I'll just write down what I want to be working on and stick it to my monitor - and I try to be a little obnoxious with it, not sticking it off to the side, but maybe cover up a little bit of the taskbar - just something so that I can't completely ignore it.
If I'm on task, it isn't a problem, I mean it's not like I need my taskbar while I'm in a text editor. But if I'm off task and switching between different windows, that note will be in the way and catch my eye.
And on this note (ha), if you're frequently finding that you are getting off task, another way to help set your intention is to also write out what you're not doing. If I'm writing these out, my list might include stuff like responding to email, checking my phone, opening up YouTube, or even sometimes doing more research. While you're doing your work, you may find yourself wanting to look something up or needing to check your phone - just keep a blank page next yourself and write down these urges. Once you come to a break, you can go through your list. Of course, you may discover that you are no longer curious if penguins are black with white feathers or white with black feathers.
What's really mind-boggling to me about resistance is how it uses the same tricks on me over and over again, and I just keep falling for them.
The most obvious one is the myth of discipline. There is a part of my brain that believes what I need is a more disciplined life. Just the other morning, I was thinking about why I ever make bad choices. I mean, I generally know what the things I'm supposed to be doing are.
I know that if I want to be losing weight, having ice cream for lunch is not the solution - and yet here I am.
I know that if I regularly exercise that it will have cascading benefits, from sleeping better to helping me manage my ADHD.
I know that if I do my work early in the week, I won't feel the crunch over the weekend.
I know all of these things. Sometimes, I even know they are the wrong choice while I'm doing them. I pop open the freezer, and I look at the ice cream, and the ice cream looks back at me, and I just go, "Yuuuup."
And part of this has come from resistance, convincing me that I can't fight it. That making the bad choice is inevitable. Because why should I fight something when I know I'm just going to eventually give in.
And when I feel like this, the reason is I don't have a plan in place. I don't have a clear goal. I don't have a "why" behind the right choices.
This is again about setting your intentions. When we don't have a good sense of why we're doing what we're doing, we're going to go down the easiest path.
And here's the thing, resistance makes making that plan harder. Because unnnh, I don't wanna sit down and write out what I want to be doing, because then maybe I might actually do it, and I just want to eat ice cream for lunch. Come on, can't you just give me that?
Writing out our plans is hard. It can be uncomfortable because we're telling ourselves that we are going to be giving something up.
But even after we start putting together our plans, resistance doesn't give up. It tells us that we need to keep our goals a secret. I mean, what if we screw up? What if we don't even last a week before we've broken down. Better to let ourselves surprise everyone with how great we are. I mean, who knows if we even want to do this right now, right?
And this is just resistance creating an easy out for us. Because when we're keeping our goals secret, we don't have any accountability. The only person we have to worry about letting down is ourselves, and even then, we know that we'll rationalize why it didn't work out. We'll tell ourselves that the circumstances weren't right. That we had too many other things going on - or worse yet, we'll tell ourselves that we didn't really dedicate ourselves to the goal. And that is the worst rationalization because it will let us try those same tactics over and over again.
This is also about perfectionism. We're keeping our goals a secret because we want an out if we mess up. But we don't need to quit when we make a mistake. In fact, we are going to make mistakes. There is absolutely no question that mistakes will be made.
And let's just think that little piece of logic through, we're going to set a goal - let's say exercising 15 minutes every day for a month. And we tell ourselves we're not going to miss a day (that's the perfectionism) - but then we don't tell anyone because we know we are going to make a mistake at some point.
In our brains, we know that we "should" be able to find 15 minutes to exercise every day so it doesn't feel like a goal we could mess up - but let's just think of a few of the ways it could happen:
I procrastinate on it all day and never get to it.
I don't see any of my reminders and forget to do it.
I'm sick and need to stay in bed.
I get busy with other stuff in my life.
I've extra secretly made it a goal to actually exercise for 30 minutes, and I'm finding that to be too much.
I just don't wanna and justify it by saying that nobody knows about my goal anyways.
So yeah, it's a goal that I feel like I "should" be able to do no problem, but it is entirely possible that I'll miss a day. So the question becomes, does missing a day mean I should quit? I mean, I didn't hit 30 days in a row, and I don't want to start over at day 1...
Listening to this, I imagine most people are falling on the side that quitting doesn't make sense. That, of course, I should keep going. That building the resilience of falling down but getting back up is more important than some arbitrary string of days.
But here's the thing, would you be telling yourself the same thing? Maybe, maybe not.
And the key here is that it is easier to see these things from an outside perspective. Since it's tough to have an outside perspective on yourself, you're going to need to recruit some help. And the best way I can think to do this is through accountability.
Accountability is a great way to help fight resistance, and you can use it in a number of different ways.
One of the perks of ADHD reWired Alumni group that you can join after going through the Coaching and Accountability groups is that you have access to Adult Study Hall. This is just a zoom room that you can sign into to have someone else to work with. I write a majority of the time in Adult Study Hall - the act of just having someone else there, even though we're silent, is incredibly motivating to stay on task. Additionally, when you sign in, you're supposed to drop into the chat what you are planning on working on. This circles back to the idea of stating your intentions before you start working on something.
Accountability also doesn't have to be real-time.
Every week I meet with my accountability group, and we talk about our intentions for that week. What's great is that when I have to verbalize what I want to work on to other people, it makes me think through what I'm actually doing. Instead of vague plans, I state what I want to complete and when I want to complete it by. If it's not clear they'll ask me questions to nail done what I'm actually doing.
And it's also important to note here that my accountability group isn't making me do any of these things. They are just supporting me. If I don't finish what I told them I wanted to complete, I don't have anyone telling me that I "should" have done things differently. Instead, my group will check in on why I wasn't able to follow through with my intentions and then help me find ways to approach the problem differently.
And to be sure, accountability isn't a panacea from resistance. I'll still have goals and projects that I intend to do that'll slip through my fingers. The point is that you don't have to fight resistance alone, and things get a lot easier when you know someone's got your back.
This Episode’s Top Tips
Our first step in fighting resistance is accepting that we are always going to be facing resistance. Resistance wants us to believe it doesn't exist because when we don't believe we don't do anything to stop it.
Planning is a critical part of overcoming resistance. Without a plan, it is easy for us to get off track and not even realize it.
When we're creating our plan it also important to break down our tasks into their component parts so that we are able to clearly state our intentions when we start our work.
We don't have to fight resistance alone, by enlisting the help of our accountabilibuddies we can get clear on our intentions and help strengthen our resilience in fighting resistance.
