Ever wanted to lose some weight or put on some muscle?
Ever wanted to create a piece of art--a book, a painting, a song?
Ever wanted to grow your side hustle into the main hustle?
Ever wanted to run a marathon?
Ever wanted to do anything that was difficult that was going to take more than just a few days?
Then you've gone head to head with what Writer Steven Pressfield calls the resistance, "that destructive force inside human nature that rises whenever we consider a tough long-term course of action that might do for us or others something that's actually good."
The resistance is the urge to not do the thing, to push it off until later. It's a dangerous fellow. It doesn't want you to show up. It's the voice telling you, you can do it tomorrow. Before long, those tomorrows have turned into months, maybe years.
To give in to it is the easy choice. It lets the body rest, the mind settle, and the soul sit. No effort. No energy. Just conservation. The body likes it, but your soul, deep down, is experiencing a death of its own--the vanishing of what you could do and who you could become.
Your ability to move forward lies in your ability to overcome the resistance. As Pressfield writes in his book, The War of Art,
There's a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don't, and the secret is this: it's not the writing part that's hard. What's hard is sitting down to write. What keeps us from sitting down is resistance
That resistance is powerful. It tries to control you. It will if you let it. But as Pressfield says, if you want to be a professional in whatever your craft is, you show up everyday, no matter what.
We show up no matter what. In sickness and in health, come hell or high water, we stagger into the factory. We might do it only so as not to let down our co-workers, or for other, less noble reasons. But we do it. We show up no matter what.
Didn't sleep well? You still show up.
Feeling under the weather? You still show up.
Dealing with some turmoil? You still show up.
The professional, no matter what, finds a way to get his work in. Not every day is a great day. Pressfield notes after he finishes writing for the day, "How many pages have I produced? I don't care. Are they any good? I don't even think about it. All that matters is I've put in my time and hit it with all I've got. All that counts is that, for this day, for this session, I have overcome resistance."
Get your work in, no matter what. It can be for five hours or thirty minutes. The duration doesn't matter, just the consistency. Momentum is a powerful thing and the less you break it, the higher up the mountain you will climb.
And there are only two valid excuses for not showing up: you're in the hospital or you lost a loved one. Every other thing, no matter what, you find a way to get your work in.
If you think you have too much on your plate or life is dealing you a tough hand, remember the words of Pressfield,
Busy is not an excuse. Tolstoy had thirteen kids and wrote War and Peace. Lance Armstrong had cancer and won the Tour de France
You can be a professional and give yourself a chance at doing something exceptional, or you can settle with the masses, giving into resistance, and keep your trajectory towards average.
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