I’m blatantly plagiarizing from Steven Pressfield’s ‘Writing Wednesday’s’ today. If you’re unfamiliar with his work, he devotes much of his writing to the concept of ‘the resistance’ and how if left in the driver’s seat, it inevitably steers us wrong. Something creatives are especially susceptible to. Steven’s blog post this week on resistance and the creative process could describe the moving process just as easily, in my frontline opinion. The resistance he describes is easily triggered in the process of buying and selling at some point, for pretty much everyone.
…. “
And yet as a creative, for sure you can look back on certain successes you’ve had and say to yourself,
How did I ever do that?
Where do we find the gall and nerve to leave what we know so well for a place yet unknown?
Two answers come to mind:
“I was so desperate I had no other choice”
Or
“I was too dumb to know I couldn’t do it.”
Either one of those is a fabulous place to be when looking to move. (It might not feel like it at the time, but it is.) [I would go so far to say anyone who makes a move in this city is in either one camp or the other.]
Consider what it means when we stand on the threshold of a new project and think to ourselves, “This is way too big for me. I can never pull this off. It’s so far out of my league it’s ridiculous.”
Whose voice is that?
It’s not our voice.
It’s the voice of Resistance.
Recall one of the Cardinal Truths of Resistance:
The greater a new project’s importance to the positive evolution of our soul, the more Resistance we will experience to attempting it.
In other words, when the voice in our heads tells us we can never achieve such a bold aspirational venture, what it really means is:
Yes, we can.
If the dream were not possible for us, Resistance would never feel the need to bomb us with megatons of negativity.
Resistance, remember, understands our capacities far better than we do.
It knows we can fly the Atlantic solo. It knows we can reach the South Pole by dog sled. It knows we can make it to the moon and back.
That’s why it feels the need to marshal all its resources to convince us we can’t.
Pressfield wrote in The War of Art,
The counterfeit artist is wildly self-confident. The real one is scared to death.
Take Resistance’s word for it.
When it tells us we can’t, it means we can.
…”
When it’s time to make the move you think you can’t, first: summon excellent support, like being in touch with me as a random example; recognize resistance for what it is; then kick it to the curb appeal and get moving!
sdelean@sutton.com