Practical Magic | 5 Ways to Gently Unblock Resistance
Ever struggled to make yourself do something you really need or want to do?
Of course you have!
It doesn’t matter how much freedom you have, how much inner work you’ve done, how much you believe in yourself...you’re going to experience resistance.
Resistance is a very natural part of the human experience, yet we tend to be very unimaginative when dealing with it.
Tired of 'crushing' it or hiding from it? Here are 5 gentle, shame-free ways to unblock resistance.
Why Does Resistance Arise?
Have you noticed that we can uncover a desire, have an ‘aha moment’, get a mental insight in a millisecond? Bam! I have an idea. I'm inspired. Let's go.
Yet physically creating the space, systems, support, and energy to receive that desire on the material plane, not to mention emotionally preparing ourselves to receive it, takes a lot longer than a millisecond.
As human beings, we get to experience time in two different ways.
The first way is through our minds: the experience of quantum momentum. In our imaginations, there are no physical limitations or boundaries.
The second way we experience time is in our bodies: gestational momentum. This momentum is sometimes so slow that we're not even aware that we're moving. It moves in cycles and has a heaviness to it. But this is the beauty of being incarnated as a human on this earth: living within our organic cyclical energy bodies that have many limitations.
Being able to experience these two different ways of living and experiencing time is so cool! But trying to create something from both of these experiences at once can get pretty frustrating because thoughts move faster than emotions and emotions move faster than bodies. This is why it can feel so damn hard to get all of us on board to do what our minds are set on.
This is why resistance has nothing to do with your own personal weakness.
Three Approaches to Deal With Resistance
Approach #1: Crush it, deny it, push past it
In our world of toxic productivity, one of the mainstream approaches to deal with resistance is to use our so-called ‘self-discipline’ to blast through our resistance at any cost.
I want us all to pay attention to the language we use when we talk to ourselves. This language of war and violence: crush it, kill it, battle it, nail it; that's the language of winners, apparently. This type of language can be found in any book about leadership, strategy, or productivity, on in the Instagram post of any ‘girl boss’.
The problem with this first approach is that it tends to feel really bad and is incredibly energy draining. In the practice of magical living, we are here to raise our energy as high as we can, sustainably protect it, and use it as efficiently as the natural world of which we are a part.
We're not here to crush or kill our resistance.
Approach #2: Run from it
We're also not here to run away from our resistance.
When we run from resistance, we often attack and shame ourselves – we believe that we can't do it. Then the shame spiral continues because days and weeks or months pass by and we still haven't done the thing that we wanted to do.
So what is the alternative?
Approach #3: Meet it head-on
Meet your resistance without violence, without fear. Get curious about it, open up to it, embrace it, welcome it!
Understand that in every expression of resistance, there's a valuable message behind it. In order to decode the message, we have to be willing to engage with it and be patient.
How does one get curious about one's resistance in a culture where we're valued as producers and consumers first, humans second?
There’s strong social conditioning based on the concept of self-discipline in western industrialised culture. The false logic behind this thinking is that if you attack yourself for making a mistake, you won't do it again. There’s a ton of psychological research that shows that attacking and punishing is a terrible motivation for a human being, especially in the long term. In order to get curious about resistance, we must abandon this school of thought. Abandon attacking yourself. Abandon shaming yourself.
Shame is the magic killer.
We are here to fully embrace Magical Living. Meet your resistance with curiosity. Respect, embrace, and welcome it, and don't bring shame into the conversation.
5 Questions to Ask Yourself to Gently Unblock Your Resistance
Whenever resistance arises, interrogate what might be behind it and what messages you might be telling yourself so that you can gently unblock your resistance and liberate new pathways and flow.
1. Is there another way I can do this?
Often resistance arises because our mind has an idea about how things should go, but our bodies and our feeling senses know better. I've already talked on this podcast about the incredible fact that most of the sensory data that our bodies are processing is completely unconscious to our minds. Our bodies are processing approximately 11 million bits of data per second, and our minds are only capable of processing about 50 bits per second. That means that less than 0.0005% of the sensory data that your body has is actually available to you mentally. 99.99995% of what your body knows is under the surface.
When we think about this, it's very easy to understand how our bodies may have a ton of resistance to the way that our mind wants to approach something, because they know so much more than our minds do. When you interrogate, is there a better way I can do this?, you can open up some of this knowing.
Ask yourself:
Am I overcomplicating this?
Am I making this harder than it needs to be? Is this a pattern that I fall into?
Am I not allowing it to be easy?
Am I trying to do this in a way that's not harnessing any of my strengths or my joy?
You could ask someone you trust in your support team – a friend or colleague – to mirror you, or to brainstorm some ideas about how you may be able to go about this in a better way.
So often, just by starting with this first question so much knowing gets unlocked about how we could go about this thing in a more efficient, less draining way.
The moment we tell our bodies, ‘Hey, you probably have something to say about this. I trust you. I'm listening.’, it's amazing how much clarity we can get on the way to moving forward.
2. Is this even for me to do?
Patriarchal toxic productivity loves it when we are burned out, overextended and resentful. Whole industries exist because women, in particular, are burned out, overextended, and resentful.
This route of unlocking resistance is about questioning taking on excessive amounts of labor.
Ask yourself:
Is this actually for me to do?
Is this my job?
Am I responsible for this?
Is this even worth doing?
Am I wasting my energy in this endeavor?
3. Is this for me to do alone?
When you experience resistance, it might be because your body doesn't want to do that thing in isolation. It knows that your full genius will be unlocked when you're in community; when you're bouncing ideas off of someone, when you're sharing the load, or when you feel supported.
Interrogate this resistance, because a very wise part of you knows that you would feel much safer and happier doing this thing in collaboration with someone else; with someone else by your side, or by delegating parts of it.
Toxic productivity loves to use shame as a motivator, and shame gets its power from secrecy and isolation.
This expression of resistance is really an invitation to open yourself up to others, to get vulnerable, to ask for support, or simply to get inspiration from someone else.
Brainstorm and share the load; it's so much more fun that way.
4. Is the timing right?
Sometimes resistance might arise because the timing is not right.
Your mind may be screaming, We need to hurry! This has to happen now! And your body is going, No, it does not.
Your body might be resisting because you are completely out of alignment. You may not have the necessary energy to actually take this thing on, whether it's preparing for a difficult conversation with someone at work or in a relationship, or taking on extra work, or about committing to a new exercise routine.
Maybe the resistance isn't there because you're weak, it's because you're so unfuelled. You have so little energy and you're in the wrong part of a cycle to do this thing fully. Your resistance is a gift. Trust that your body knows the right time to do things and that you don't have to do everything at once.
Ask yourself:
Am I in alignment?
Is this the right time for this?
Does doing this now make sense on a bodily level?
Do I need to fuel myself first?
Do I need to take care of myself first?
Am I stagnating somewhere because I haven't completed another cycle?
5. Am I missing information?
Finally, resistance can show up because you don't have enough information to move forward.
When this doubt-based resistance emerges, we often make it a story about the fact that we don't believe in ourselves enough, we're not confident enough, or we're not talented enough. But it usually doesn't have anything to do with that.
Often, it's simply because we don't have enough information to move forward yet. Our bodies hate uncertainty and they love specific, embodied details.
Ask yourself:
Do I know everything I need to know to take this on?
What other resources might I need?
Do I have a plan for the breakdown of steps to remove doubt and uncertainty?
Upon questioning, you may realise that resistance is arising because you don't actually know what the next step to take is. There's your solution of how you can work with that resistance and find a pathway forward.
Resistance Is Simply a Message From You to You
Playing with resistance in this way begins with full approval.
It's often a message coming from a deep unconscious part of you, trying to get in touch with a very fast-moving, conscious part of you that doesn't have as much information. Celebrate the amazing fact that as a human being, you get to experience quantum momentum and gestational momentum, and celebrate how cool it is that resistance is often the friction in between. It's telling you that your body has the insight to share with you that you don't normally have conscious access to. You get to get to play detective and find out what it is!
Whenever you notice resistance arising in you, I invite you to see if one of these questions unlocks something for you. See if you can rewire your relationship to resistance in real-time. As you do, you'll begin to strengthen your relationship with your body’s inner signal. And that relationship is the foundation for magical living, pure and simple.
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EP 4. Practical Magic | The Lockdown Artists’s Date
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