You want to get in better shape. You want to feel better and have more energy. You want to look great in your jeans.

You start paying more attention to what you are eating. You join a gym. Maybe you even start working out on a regular basis.

And you start to feel better and lose some weight.

And then suddenly it stops.

You become overwhelmed by work, your family responsibilities, your relationship.

It feels like your life is falling apart and little by little, you start to cheat yourself.

You decide to have another “treat” – a burger, a chocolate bar, some fries, a second glass of wine. You need it after all. You’ve been working so hard. You’ve made progress. It’s time to celebrate.

You skip a workout saying that you’re too tired. You’ll do it tomorrow. Tomorrow comes and goes. Then the next day. Then a week.

Your energy feels like it has been sucked out of you like a Death Eater, and you can’t imagine what could possibly get you back on track again.

You are exhausted. You have started and failed to follow through with your plans to get in better shape so many times.

You think, “Maybe success is some impossible ideal. Why bother if I’m just going to fail again?”

_______

If you’ve ever experienced any or all of these thoughts, you’ve been victim to a thing that artists call Resistance. It is that indescribable thing that stops you before you start. The thoughts that tell you that your desires are foolish and crazy. The self-doubt that causes you to erase all the progress you’ve made and maybe even end up worse off.

Before you start your own pity party, thinking that you are the only one who can’t seem to succeed, know that you are not alone.

This week I have been re-reading some treasured personal development books, and one of the books that popped to the surface was “The War of Art” by Steven Pressfield. Some friends are reading a trilogy of Pressfield’s books on the art of being an artist, and  even though I hadn’t read the book in at least a couple of years, I admit I didn’t even want to read it.

I rarely re-read a book. After all, there are only so many hours in the day. With so much to do, why waste time reading something I’ve already read?

However, once I started reading, it became clear to me that these were words I really needed to hear. In my growth as an actor and an entrepreneur, I have come so far, but I’m still not experiencing the level of success that I desire in my life.

The more I read, the more I recognized some of the patterns of frustration I had created for myself in the past year as manifestations of my Resistance. Failure to keep up with balancing my accounts. Accumulating huge piles of clutter. Not cooking my own meals. And perhaps the biggest one – I haven’t written a blog post since January!

My excuses?

• I was too busy pursuing my acting career, and auditions left me too exhausted to put time into my business.
• I don’t know where my business is going and I’m terrified of creating a business that is bigger than I can handle.
• Why should I put all this effort into building a business that I might have to leave one day when my acting career becomes wildly successful?

(Beware: Excuses are one of the biggest forms of Resistance.)

So how do we move past our excuses, our Resistance and achieve the Success we truly desire? In brief, take action daily towards our dreams and do whatever we have to to silence our Resistance. (more on that later – today I’m starting to read Pressfield’s book “Do the Work”)

For now, I am so grateful that I picked up this book so that I could see my Resistance for what it really is – a big fat liar, that is scared of change.

So to my Resistance, I’m saying “Thank you for your opinions, but no thank you. I choose to listen to my heart and not you.”

What about you? Where is Resistance surfacing in your life and especially in regard to your desire to be more fit? What excuses are you making that are stopping you dead in your tracks? What action can you take to beat your Resistance today?

Leave your comments below. You might just help someone else conquer her own Resistance.

xo,

Natalie