Why Befriending Resistance Will Replenish Your Motivation

Tap into unconscious emotional drives for near-automatic motivation

You want success. And you know the skills needed to materialize it. However, growing these skills requires you to act, day after day.

Sometimes you feel delighted. You do your work and drop into a blissful flow. Other days, you’re frustrated by your procrastination. You’re confused about what you want.

This is resistance. And it comes in many forms. Many of them are sneaky. But what if resistance isn’t strictly a nefarious force? Resistance can encourage negative spirals, yes. Yet at its root it’s simply a messenger.

If you see resistance as the enemy, you use it against yourself. Integrate it, and it can drive your success.

View Your Impulses as Maps, Not Pests

Creative work invites a turn away from compliance and toward the self. This may contradict your programming.

Resistance when approaching creative work makes sense, really. From an early age, authority figures socialized most of us into compliance. They trained us to associate it with reward.

When you create, you contend with those early voices. They insist that without a clear and definite reward, what’s the point? They warn you that you’re “wasting time.”

This scarcity-based mentality isn’t your fault, of course. Resistance is the spokesperson for the paradigm that governs your experience, and you didn’t choose it. It chose you.

Your paradigms are your reality filters. They determine what you believe is true or possible. One of resistance’s favorite costumes is what Bob Proctor calls the terror barrier.

When you try something new and challenging, your paradigm erects the terror barrier. Publish a book? Learn harmonica? Over my dead body, your paradigm hisses.

The terror barrier appears as resistance and other vectors of struggle. Like everything that breathes, paradigms fight for their survival at all costs. If you move beyond the terror barrier, you’ve killed your paradigm. A new one emerges in its place. Depending on where you are, your momentum can be your paradigm’s worst nightmare.

This is where people pull out tools like will power, grit, perseverance, and discipline. This is your cue to post notes on your cupboards that read “NO COFFEE FOR SIX WEEKS (OR ELSE).”

Yes, these moves are useful at times. But they’re not sustainable. They’re rooted in the assumption that your inclinations are wrong or bad. When you value discipline, you confirm that there’s something wrong with your default setting. This assumption depletes your energy.

Resistance Doesn’t Make Mistakes

People emphasize these self-denial-based programs because it’s tough to stay consistent. There are several people within any given individual. And this is why we emphasize resources like will power. It feels like the tin can and string between the motivated and the unmotivated self.

Still. Call off the war. When you’re too focused on discipline, you shut off an innate connection to wisdom.

As Byron Katie says: How can you know that something should be happening? Because it’s happening. Resistance, like all powerful emotion, is meaningful. When you accept it, you open the opportunity to use its messaging as calibration data.

Everything you experience has a purpose. Regardless of whether this idea is true, it’s useful. Without this basic assumption, there’s no guidance. There’s no real support or meaning. And this is something everyone needs.

Here’s the thing. Western culture offers generic solutions to intricate problems. It’s about convenience. Our society lacks structures and systems capable of addressing individual experience. Its solutions are intended for the masses. Not you.

Think about anti-depressant medication. People often mistake bad circumstances for brain chemistry imbalances. If you spend 50 hours per week doing unfulfilling work in a cube, what do you expect? Aren’t those feelings of anxiety or depression there for a reason? If they weren’t, why would doing what you love make you happy?

That anti-depressant prescription says that something is wrong with you, not your circumstances. But if you can’t trust your feelings as a reliable instrument for discovering what to feel, do, or say, who or what can you trust?

Likewise, when you make will power your go-to resource when you’re feeling unmotivated, you presuppose that something is wrong. But that lack of motivation is there for a reason. It’s a clue that something isn’t aligned. When you restore balance, motivation naturally follows.

Honor Your Values and Direct Your Life

I once used will power and other force-centric tools to achieve my goals. My perspectives shifted after learning about the evolutionary mismatch theory.

Humans have nonnegotiable needs related to diet, sunlight, relationships, and exercise. If these needs go unmet, humans survive, but they don’t thrive.

Your emotions contain clues about how to re-calibrate your behavior. When you feel anxious, it’s because there’s something that needs addressing.

Likewise, your resistance to creative work isn’t evidence that you’re prone to inconsistency. It’s a sign that there’s something in your process that isn’t in harmony with the rhythms of your attention. Maybe you’re playing with an idea that’s disconnected from your real preoccupations, or something else.

Instead of seeing your lack of motivation as a problem to solve, see it as a gift. It’s data. Your boredom, frustration or anxiety are all bearers of useful information.

You can take the message. You can produce results you want. You’re free to tinker with your processes until resistance dissipates. Without the so-called negative emotions, how would you know when it’s time to make a shift?

As Damon Cart, creator of Life Mastery Gym, suggests, you can dispel resistance by searching for the positive intent behind it.

Do some journaling. Ask your resistance why it’s here. Perhaps it wants to avoid getting hurt. Okay. From there, ask yourself, what’s good about not getting hurt? This is a process called value solicitation.

At some point, you’ll find a positive motivation. Ask that positive motivation why it matters. Keep going. The deeper you go, the more you’ll learn. As you continue, you’ll unlock an inner drive that’s connected to your unconscious values. This will allow you to feel a far-reaching, genuine sense of motivation. You won’t need to drink lots of coffee or shut out the world to do your work. You’ll automatically do it. No force or friction necessary.

To stay motivated over the long term, connect with yourself. Integrate your struggles. Don’t push them away.

They’re meaningful. An inherent drive toward balance governs your mind and body. This is a belief I love. If you adopt it, you’ll find an organic sense of motivation. You’ll stop fighting yourself, find fulfillment, and create a congruent body of work.