Have you ever had a toddler-like mental meltdown with yourself?

Like, there’s something you have to do - you know you need to do it - but you’re so resistant to it that your brain brings up excuse after excuse why you don’t want to, can’t, or just simply won’t?

I don’t know anyone who HAS NOT experienced resistance of some sort!

Let me give you some examples of resistance to doing something hard & new:

• Doubting the potential solution can help us.
• Fear that the hard work will actually WORK & help us solve our problem!
• Confusion about how to move forward - because we’ve never done this particular thing before & we don’t know HOW!

What I want to teach you today is that moving through resistance creates confidence: it shows you that you can do hard things, even if you’re scared, resistant, or unsure of the how.

And that’s how you reach your goal.

When we choose to move through resistance, there is great ease on the other side because a) you’ve moved forward toward what you really want and b) because you’ve proven to yourself that you can do hard things!

Personally & professionally, I have a LOT of awesome examples of resistance! I’ve been the QUEEN of resistance! Any time I’ve wanted to make a leap in my life - any sort of change - I’ve experienced severe resistance.

It has never served me well…until I came to realize how it was holding me back and the patterns I was creating for myself. So today, I’m going to teach you how to know if you’re in resistance and then figure out a game plan to move forward.

Let’s start with the big question: How do you know if you’re resisting? This is important because your brain is probably coming up with all kinds of excuses & reasons & justifications that keep you from realizing that you’re RESISTING - and THAT is what’s keeping you from your goals.

So - ok - how DO you know if you’re in Resistance?

Today I’m using an example from my first business when I was deep into resistance... and I didn’t really know it. The resistance was keeping me from making changes & moving forward and here’s what it looked like:

1. Complaining:

I was complaining a lot. I was unhappy, and I was talking about all the things that were making me unhappy - all the time.

With my husband. My family. My best friend. Myself.

Now, I see it as the complaining it was, but at the time, I felt very justified in talking this way.

Things in the business were very hard: we were struggling financially, and we felt like nothing could turn that around. We felt angry & frustrated & hopeless.

We felt like there must be a better way, but someone wasn’t giving us the right ingredient to complete the recipe. We didn’t have someone guiding us - and we couldn’t get out of our own way.

It got to the point where I felt that no action could fix anything, so I’d kind of given up trying to make changes. And so, to feel better, I complained.

Complaining changes nothing. Which led me to feel…

2. Feeling Lost:

Things got harder and harder. And I got more & more exhausted & lost. I didn’t know who to turn to for help.

I didn’t even know which questions to ask to GET help!

I didn’t know who to trust - because I especially didn’t trust myself anymore. I knew I wanted & needed things to be different in the business - and in the relationships there - but in order to make those changes, I had to do some really HARD things.

And I had to have some REALLY hard conversations.

And I didn’t know if I could do them. I didn’t trust myself. I didn’t know myself anymore. I didn’t have a game plan or a guide to help me find my way.

I guess you could say I was pretty committed to my distrust of myself. I was committed to staying lost - because everything else seemed so much harder.

And so, I stayed lost for far too long. If I’d have been real with myself about how I felt - I’d have moved through the resistance much more quickly and without so much difficulty.

3. Being Exhausted

When you’re working so hard and getting nowhere, you’re going to feel exhausted. Burned out, even. Watch the resentment show up. Watch yourself start to give up.

When you’re in a state of resistance, you’re TIRED. But you start to mentally learn how to maneuver around the hard things - rather than through it. You think this creates ease because in the moment, it feels like the easy button.

I figured out how to move around having hard conversations - rather than having the hard conversations!

I figured out how to work around a boundary problem - rather than solving it once & for all.

Working around something is great until I realized how much energy it was stealing from me.

Until you realize how much time goes into the workaround…

Until you realize that the problem isn’t getting solved, the goal isn’t getting reached, and you aren’t feeling better.

That was me, in a nutshell. I was so exhausted that I wound up losing myself. I described it as feeling crispy - and even went so far at one point to say “I feel dead inside.”

If you’re throwing your hands up in the air a lot and shrugging - I bet you’re exhausted.

And that’s a huge time & energy SUCK from your life.

Complaining, Feeling Lost, and Being Exhausted were 3 ways I knew I was resisting making big changes in my life.

Why do we resist? Because it’s easier to bitch about things…it’s easier to throw up your hands and say, “I just don’t know how”.

It’s easier to work around problems because you’re just so damned tired.