I don't feel like it

What are those feelings of ‘I don’t want to’, ‘I’m not in the mood’, or ‘I don’t feel like it’?

It’s called Resistance - with a capital R. Resistance was coined by Stephen Pressfield, most notably in his book The War of Art. Last week I mentioned mood congruent attentional bias - which is that moods change perception, so when your mood gets worse, do does your brain’s negative bias.

I think the title of the blog led most people to skip last week’s message. At any rate, does any of the following sound familiar:

  I know what to do, but I don’t do it.

  I have my week mapped out, but it doesn’t happen.

  I have things on my schedule, but I never actually do them.

Why? 

• Something comes up.

• Then something else comes up.

Often we are blaming external circumstances. However, if you stop for a moment, you know that the reason(s) you do not do what you are supposed to do are not external. They are internal.

From The War of Art:

“…We feel like hell. A low-grade misery pervades everything. We’re bored, we’re restless. We can’t get no satisfaction. There’s guilt but we can’t put our finger on the source. We want to go back to bed; we want to get up and party. We feel unloved and unlovable. We’re disgusted. We hate our lives. We hate ourselves.”

Maybe those words are too strong, or too confronting. Maybe it’s simply not true for you. Or…maybe it’s not true at this moment, but has been in the past…? Maybe it will come up again in the future?

I absolutely know it’s been true for me. Maybe not the exact words, but the essence of it. That’s why I wrote a whole chapter on Resistance in my book!

Continuing from Pressfield:

“Unalleviated, Resistance mounts to a pitch that becomes unendurable. At this point vices kick in. Dope, adultery, web surfing. 

Beyond that, Resistance becomes clinical. Depression, aggression, dysfunction. Then actual crime and physical self-destruction." 

When I know what to do and do not do it, a deep inner angst builds inside. It’s a familiar feeling.

It does not go away until I do the thing that needs to be done. Again, the words Pressfield uses don’t capture my exact experience - but the essence is correct. Resistance unalleviated is a miserable feeling. 

Of course, there is a surefire way to beat Resistance: action.

You might be sick of me talking about taking action. We are still early in the year and what seems to be missing from many people’s daily lives is…action. Not even “massive action” as Tony Robbins likes to say. I am simply talking about a little action performed daily that moves you in the right direction.

Remember, the year is long in real estate. You can’t do it all in one day, or one week, or one month. You have to pace yourself, but you must get going!

“People who get things done in this world don’t wait for the spirit to move them; they move the spirit.” - David Schwartz, The Magic of Thinking Big