Fighting Resistance
Here's a shortlist, in no particular order, of things I've felt resistance to:
Doing my taxes
Brushing my teeth
Writing
Exercising
Making food
Hanging out with friends
Going to bed
Getting out of bed
Staying in bed
Resistance tends to rear it's head anytime that we find ourselves choosing between what would feel good now versus what would feel good in the future.
But I can feel resistance to doing pretty much anything. I've felt resistance to eating a brownie because I'd have to get up off the couch. I mean, I suppose that is just a micro version of feeling good now while sitting on the couch versus the reward of getting to the kitchen for the brownie.
Resistance is something that everyone feels - sometimes, we just don't want to do things. And there are times when resistance doesn't hit me at all - I'll walk into the kitchen and see the dishwasher has finished running and just go and unload it. No inner fight, I saw that it needed to be emptied and went and did it. I mean, maybe I was procrastinating on doing something else, but none the less there was something I could have felt resistant to and didn't.
We've all felt resistance.
It's that debilitating inertia that keeps us from starting. It is the dread that keeps us from starting a task we know we "should" be work on. It is the definition of self-sabotage.
And resistance can take any form.
It the voice telling us we have to clear off our desk before we start our work. It's the voice telling me that I'll play my game for "just 5 minutes" before beginning my assignment, and then also the voice telling me that now that I'm playing, I don't have enough time to finish anyways so I should just keep playing.
It's the voice that rationalizes why we aren't doing the thing we should be doing - and here's the thing, these rationalizations are often true.
If I say I'm having trouble concentrating because I haven't had enough water, I should go get some water, but resistance will convince me that I need to quit working rather than just taking a five-minute break and filling up my water bottle.
Resistance allows everything to become a reason to not work, and it lets us procrastinate forever. Resistance will do anything to keep us from moving forward. It is the malaise that holds us in place and tells us that we're better off where we are now. That the discomfort we feel now is better than the pain of trying and failing.
And what makes resistance so insidious is it's relationship with shame. Resistance keeps us from doing the things we want to be doing and builds up the shame of not completing them. We become convinced that we're not living up to our true potential. We become convinced that the only thing standing between us and the person we could be is the fact that we're lazy. That we're not good enough. And that we're the ones to blame. That we deserve this.
It doesn't matter that there are only so many hours in the day that I can work. Resistance tells me that I should be working all of them. That if I'm taking breaks or doing anything other than ticking off items on my to-do list that I am failing. It tells me that I'm only worth what I produce and that I'll never produce enough to be worth anything.
So let me say this: Fuck resistance. Fuck the idea that I'm only worth my work. And fuck the concept of my unlived potential.
I'm worth more than the work I produce.
I don't need to work all the time.
I don't need to live in the shame of an unlive potential.
I am who I am, and there is no potential me that is being held back.
I grew up hearing how I wasn't living up to my potential. That I was smart, but that if I just applied myself that I could do anything I wanted. This is a pretty common theme with ADHD - and it can be debilitating. It leads us to believe that we are broken. That no matter how much we do that, we could do more. We believe that if only we didn't have ADHD, we'd be the most productive people on the planet.
But it isn't our ADHD that holding us back. It's these beliefs that paralyze us and fill us with unrealistic expectations.
This isn't to say that I need to stay where I am right now. I have goals and dreams that I'm working towards achieving. But I don't have to go a breakneck pace to reach them. I don't have to sacrifice everything else in my life to hit the goals society expects me to.
I mean, what's the rush?
Well, the rush is that I want it now. The rush is resistance telling me that I'm not going fast enough. That I'm falling behind...
Well, except who am I falling behind? Who am I comparing myself to?
Other podcasters? Well, that's kind of a broad category, and if we didn't start at the same time, that's not entirely reasonable.
Well, maybe I'm comparing myself to other 35-year-olds. Or other people with ADHD? Or... I'm struggling to think of someone that it would be reasonable to compare myself to. And the keyword here is reasonable.
It's human nature to fall into comparison, but we are often comparing ourselves to people completely different than we are.
When I drive through my neighborhood, it's easy to notice that I have one of the worst cars. It's not that I have a bad car, it's just that I've been driving this one for over ten years now. It would be easy for me to compare myself to my neighbor and use my car as a comparison as to why they are more successful.
Fortunately for me, I don't measure success in terms of cars. I mean, I do want to get a new car, but I want to get a minivan, so it's not like I'm trying to out-cool anyone with that purchase.
We're all on different paths, so to say I'm behind is at best disingenuous.
We've got to be careful with our comparisons because we are always comparing our insides to everyone else's outsides.
I internalized this idea during a meeting where I came in feeling truly a mess. I had been sleeping poorly. I hadn't finished most of what I had wanted to do that week. But I had put together some documents for the meeting. And it wasn't like what I put together was great - at least to me. Everyone else at the meeting amazed at what I had prepared - they told me I was a rockstar.
And all I could do was laugh because while they thought I was doing great, I didn't feel like I was doing great. All they could see was what I was presenting to them. To them, it didn't matter that I was struggling with things at home because they couldn't see it.
And along with that, I didn't see the big deal with what I had done. Putting together the documents wasn't hard. Sure I used some fancy fonts and made it look nice, but it took me all of 20 minutes. It wasn't hard work.
And that there is resistance talk again - telling me that the only worthwhile work is hard work. That I have to measure the success of my work by how much I struggled while working on it. It was telling me that because what I was doing wasn't "hard" that I wasn't really working. That I shouldn't be proud of things that are easy for me.
And this comes back to that idea of basing your worth on your work. Modern culture has an obsession with hard work. That if we're not working hard, then we're not really working.
While this sentiment intends to encourage people to do amazing things, it can also have the opposite effect. Not everything I produce needs to be something I labored over.
We have to realize that as we get better at things, they get easier and easier to do. Sure, I put those documents together in 20 minutes, but it was only easy because I knew what I was doing, but I only knew what I was doing through years of doing it.
This really is, is just another version of perfectionism. We internalized that we need to struggle to produce quality work. But then when something is difficult anymore, we have no way of judging it's worth, so we rationalize that when things are easy, it's because we're doing a lousy job.
And when we're combining this with comparing ourselves to others, we find that we are never going to be able to measure up. Because when we see someone do something and say, "wow, they made that look easy," we don't think that they did a bad job, we're admiring their skill. But when we make something look easy, we believe that we're not pushing ourselves.
I mean, just take learning to read. I'm dyslexic, and I didn't end up reading by myself until the 4th grade. Years of struggle went into getting to the point I'm at - with the extra time I've had in quarantine, I've read about 20 books so far this year.
But even with overcoming my reading challenges, I can get caught up in comparisons still.
I do most of my reading on a Kindle, and since you can't physically see how much of the book is left, I use a feature that predicts how much reading time is in a book. In this way, I measure most books in hours read instead of pages.
When I first open a book, it uses the average time it takes someone to read the book, but as you read, it recalculates based on your reading speed. And so with every new book, I get reminded that I am, in fact, a slow reader as the timer usually doubles as I read that first chapter.
No matter that I am dyslexic, and it is literally harder for me to read. I still feel that comparison.
While I was only diagnosed with ADHD in my 20's, I've known about my dyslexia my entire life. I don't even have clear memories of a time that I didn't know I was dyslexic. Because of this, it is relatively easy for me to dismiss some of these comparisons. Being dyslexic is just who I am.
But with ADHD, I've had years where I was able to compare my productivity to others unhindered. While some of it could be blamed on my dyslexia, I usually chalked up my lack of focus and productivity to being a shit human.
Even now, with my diagnosis, it is hard for me to ignore the fact that it seems like other people can just get more done than me. My brain says, look at them. If you could just focus on your work, you wouldn't constantly find yourself in the hole. If you didn't always give into resistance, you'd be just like them.
And this is our problem with comparison. I have no idea what's going on on the inside with them. I have no idea of the struggles they are facing. Maybe they're spending all their time at the office because of how bad their home life is, and that's their only escape.
And maybe they just are better than me. Does it matter? Because I'm also not looking at how they got here. I'm not seeing all the work they put in to get to where they are now. The same way that experience makes things easier for me to do also is going to be making things easier for them to do.
It is incredibly easy to cast resistance as the villain of our story here. We see all the bad that comes from resistance, but resistance isn't trying to ruin us - it's trying to keep us safe in its own twisted way. We know that when we put ourselves out there that we've got the potential to get hurt. Every time I sit down and write, I'm creating the potential pain of criticism. It doesn't matter whether it is true or not; those words are still going to hurt.
Resistance wants us to be comfortable where we are right now - why not just avoid that potential pain?
Generally, I'm a guy who goes with the flow of things. I try and take things in stride and not get too upset about not getting my way. But that's just me following the path of least resistance.
That's okay sometimes, but if I want to go after things that are going to have a positive impact, I'm going to need to go against the flow sometimes. I'm going to need to get uncomfortable.
And this is one of the keys to why resistance is so hard to fight. What we crave and what we need to grow don't always match.
Right now, I'd love to dig into some fresh baked cookies. Just imagining the smell is setting off my taste buds. I'm not even hungry, but cookies just sound delicious.
Yeah, I'm not hungry, and yet, I'm still craving that sugary dopamine hit. And I know even after that first cookie, I'm going to want another. And another. I'll eat the whole plate before I'm satisfied - I'll make myself sick before I'm "satisfied."
But you know what I'm not craving - going on a walk - sitting down to do some meditation. Or even just opening my book and reading for pleasure.
But those are some of the things I need more of in my life. I know that when I'm feeling out of it, a quick 15-minute walk will usually make me feel better. But when I'm out of it, taking a 15-minute walk is usually the last thing I want to do.
Instead, I'll pop open my phone and scroll Twitter for 15 minutes - will I feel better afterward - probably not. Resistance is holding my butt in the chair.
Sometimes resistance is going to win, but we can do things to help it win less of the time.
First, we've got to remember that we're going to have to get uncomfortable. But also that those whispers of resistance are going to be the strongest before we've started.
When I take those walks, it's not the walk that's hard; it's the starting. Once I'm out walking, the resistance has all but faded away.
So the focus here needs to be on how to make starting easier.
When I'm working, instead of telling myself that I need to get to it, I'll just idly open what I need to work on.
Well, now that it's open, I might as well start.
Another option is to just make what you want to do more enticing. When I go for walks, I usually listen to podcasts. If I've got a podcast I want to finish listening to it is much much easier to convince myself to head out for that walk.
When I'm done doing those things that actually make me feel better, I need to remind myself that they do make me feel better. Check-in with yourself after that walk and ask how you feel?
I wasn't entirely honest earlier because there are times that I crave movement. And there are times I crave eating a healthy meal - and this is because my brain has started to recognize that those are the things that really make me feel good.
While it won't ever wholly override our desire for those quick dopamine hits, it does eventually start rewiring our brain to crave those things that are good for us.
This Episode’s Top Tips
Resistance is the inertia that keeps us from starting. It is also the inertia that slows us down and stops us in our tracks. If we want to be doing meaningful work we need to look at ways we can fight our own internal resistance.
Comparing ourselves to others is an exercise that is never going to lead us down a good path.
We need to abandon struggle as a metric for success. Everything gets easier as we do it more and just because something is difficult to do doesn't mean it is more worthwhile.
What we crave and what we need to grow don't always match. This means we have to work on rewiring our desires so we're not always fighting resistance to go on a walk. We can do this by being mindful and taking note of how we feel after we do things that are good for us.
Mentioned in this Episode
The War of Art by Steven Pressfield
