Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art defined an interesting idea called “resistance”. He defined it as the singular force of inertia that keeps creative people from progressing and not practicing “their art”. A term that most closely matches this idea is procrastination, but Pressfield defined resistance in a slightly different way.
While we procrastinate things that we must do like office work, school work, or chores, we face resistance in the things we enjoy doing funnily enough. A guitar player loves playing the guitar. A singer, singing. An artist, making art. Yet, practicing these things every day becomes a drag and everyone who has tried to progress in a creative pursuit has felt that before.
Pressfield’s argument in the book is that resistance should be treated as the number one enemy between you and your goals, particularly if you’re trying to acquire skills. The reason is that skill acquisition is a result of volume: the more you practice something, the better you get.
Why must we fight resistance?
Is this really the way forward? Don’t the people who have achieved massive success simply love their craft so much that they keep practicing it?
Wrong.
Even the greats face resistance. The key difference is that they fight that voice in their head which asks for a day off. There’s no room for voices like that in their heads. They fight the battle with resistance and win, whereas normal people quit the moment our brains go: “Ugh, I really don’t want to write today” or “I’d rather spend the whole day doing nothing rather than practice basketball”.
Furthermore, learning to fight and win over resistance is a crucial life skill. The truth is, our minds lie to us. All the time. They convince us that a particular thing isn’t worth doing, bombards us with negative emotions that prevent us from taking action, and pulls us back to the same thought patterns that halts our growth. The mind, in its uncontrolled state, isn’t to be trusted. It is a crafty bastard.
Fighting resistance (and winning) is effectively mind control. It is detaching from our emotions and doing the things that we’re supposed to do. We’re supposed to practice every single day, true or false? Well what stops you from doing that? Our minds. The mind releases difficult emotions that convince us to not take action. The thing missing in our lives is mind control, and this is the skill that will change the trajectory of our lives.
Furthermore, overcoming resistance is better learnt sooner rather than later. The best time to learn this skill was 20 years ago. But the next best time is right now. This is because the skill pays dividends as we progress through life.
The older you get, the more responsibilities you’ll have. This is a fact. And when the burden of responsibilities fall on your head, you will have no choice but to do what you’re supposed to. And the person who will not have learnt to control their minds will face a lot of internal pain whereas the person who did will be chilling. This would not be the first time they had to put their emotions on hold and take care of business. They’d be used to it.
The origins of resistance
Actually, most people don’t have resistance while doing certain activities. When’s the last time you procrastinated playing that video game or watching Instagram reels? Never. These activities are pleasurable to you although they don’t get you closer to your goals. But having to work or practice kills you, doesn’t it? There’s a marked difference here and we need to explore it more.
Let’s look at a group of people who seem to enjoy practicing as though they’re watching Netflix. Experienced professionals. If we look at experienced professionals of anything, they can practice for hours. They seem to have no resistance in them whatsoever, leading to the false conclusion that they don’t experience resistance at all. The reality is that they’re just able to manage the resistance better.
This is due to a right mindset combined with the scar tissue of having been through practice hundreds if not thousands of times. They don’t have the unrealistic expectations that most beginners have. Importantly, they certainly don’t think that they’re going to get results immediately. Impatience is closely related to resistance.
Let’s do a thought experiment. Take 2 people. One has infinite levels of patience and the other has the patience of a toddler. Who is more likely to succumb to difficult emotions during practice? It is probably the second one. And thus, resistance is formed. Why?
Our minds keep a record of every state we experienced while doing any activity. We start craving playing video games because our brains fetch a snapshot of how pleasurable they were to play. On the other hand, any difficult feelings associated with practicing previously bubble up again the next time you practice. This, I believe, is how resistance is created and builds i.e. the cumulated negative emotions that impatience brings to the table.
How to fight resistance?
All this sounds good, but it leaves the question: how to move forward with this knowledge? How can we learn to detach from our emotions? From our minds? What do we do when the idea of practicing or finishing that piece of work feels like a ton of bricks on our heads? We need to fight fire with fire i.e. fight our emotions with logic. Step by step. Here are 7 practical ways for us to do that.
- Become aware. We need to attach our negative feelings to this monster we’re calling resistance. Through this, we’re building our own awareness of what is going on in our heads. Imagine a fight breaks out between you and a random asshole at the bar. But there’s a catch: the person is invisible. Uh oh… That’d be a problem, wouldn’t it? We’d probably end up in the hospital that night.
It is not surprising that we lose each battle against our minds and emotions because our battles are no different. We have not taken the time to build awareness into what is truly happening in our heads. Hence, the enemy in our head is invisible. We have to change that. The moment we build enough awareness to be revolted by the enemy in our own heads, we have taken away resistance’s invisibility. We know it’s this weird force of inertia in our heads that’s making us feel this way. And once we know that, we can kick its butt.
- Check your mindset. I invite you to check the way you think about the things you do. If you are putting off doing things and are trivializing the difficulty of them, know that you may be doing this because of your arrogance. This is not the kind of arrogance that is bold and brash, but it’s a more subtle kind of arrogance which does a lot of harm. I recognized this first in myself because I would think about implementing some of the steps written in this section into my life but I would convince myself that I didn’t need it.
“Me? Hah, I don’t need these things. Maybe other people do. I’m gravy cowboy”
Little ways by which slip into an arrogant state. Thinking you don’t need to practice. Thinking you can reach the airport gates in 15 minutes, so need need to be early. These mental shortcuts we take really make us suffer when weird contingencies inevitably crop out. Then our sloppy thinking is nastily revealed.
Do not allow even an ounce of arrogance in your mind. Instead, do the opposite. Over prepare. Work more. Lift more. Listen to other people. Practice. Beware of the ego trap and instead be radically open-minded. This will decimate any arrogance in thinking, which often is a positive influence to the resistance in our minds. Take away arrogance, and you take away the dagger that resistance wields. - Rely on alarm clocks. Here’s my typical thinking process. “Ohh, that work is really easy. I’ll get it done in a day”. (Morgan Stanley voice) He did not get it done in a day. “I don’t need to set reminders for those things. I’ll remember them, no problem!”. (Morgan Stanley voice) He did not remember anything.
Relying on your memory does not work. Our memories are flawed and, because we live in a fast-paced, dynamic world, our attentions get pulled in many directions throughout the day. It gets very difficult to remember what we actually need to do and what our Eisenhower matrix truly says. Why not use the most simple application on all of our phones to fix this? The simple clock app.
Set multiple alarms throughout the day to partition when you need to be doing something. We’re all creatures of habits and if we get it into our heads that 2 o’ clock every day means practice time, it is less likely that resistance will rattle you. - Use your negative feelings. Here’s another common fallacy: people advise others to think positive when someone is down. Although people have started pushing back on this recently, there’s still more to the story that most people tend to miss. Not only does asking someone to think positive do nothing to people who are sad, this causes the sad people to feel as though something is wrong with them. As if everybody is supposed to be happy all the damn time.
This is not true. Everyone feels down sometimes. And you know what? This is an opportunity to tap into some powerful emotions in your head. Anger. Resentment. Jealousy. Sadness. All of this can be used as rocket fuel and spur you into action. Don’t be afraid of your negative feelings. Use them to combat resistance. Think of that person who wronged you. Who didn’t believe in you. Who teased you. Like Jordan, take it personal. Make a collection of painful memories to use when you’re unmotivated. - Use your positive feelings. Feelings in general are a superpower evolution has bestowed upon us. Why would we not aim to use it? When resistance makes things difficult for us, we can rely on our past accomplishments or our resume.
Thinking about my improvements, the time I performed really well, and the weaknesses that I’ve overcome, really gets me fired up. At that time, I don’t need red bull, coffee, motivational videos or any other substance to spur me into action. I am already there. So, remember the times you persevered. If it helps, make a list! Read the things you’ve done and seek to add one more thing on it by beating resistance consistently. - Give yourself no choice. Many people, including myself, have been worried about this we call self-esteem. What is this mystical things? And why do some people seem to have it and others don’t? I’ve spent some years thinking, reading, and exploring about this and the answer seems to be: do you keep promises with yourself or not?
When push comes to shove, when you’re challenged, do you give up or rise to the occasion? Think about the profile of a person who has high self-esteem. Which of the two categories listed above would they fall under? It is obvious. Keeping promises you’ve made to yourself, proves to you that you can be trusted.
Thus, our words gain another form of power with this mentality. We have the opportunity to make positive or negative contributions to our esteem. Our words become hyper important. The things we say to ourselves and others that we will do… we must do. Otherwise we are inviting internal conflict in ourselves.
My word is my bond. I have no other choice but to follow through with actions. Because that’s the deal I made with myself. This is how we defeat resistance. - Consistency over intensity. We know that our emotional states, particularly feelings of impatience, create and build momentum in favor of resistance. How do we combat that? We cannot always feel great while practicing, and it is only natural to feel dejected or irritated when something takes a long time to improve.
The only thing we can to safeguard ourselves from imprinting the wrong feelings with our activities is to take things slow. Most of us are like shooting stars: way too intense in the beginning only to fall with time. I want to make this clear: fighting resistance does not mean practicing intensely. Overcoming resistance is conquering the initial inertia that prevents us from beginning practice. Once we’re practicing, the goal is to press the gas pedal smoothly.
Building intensity too soon is a guarantee of failure. It will build too much resistance and we will never learn to feel pleasure with practice. We should aim to practice in a way such that we drop whatever we’re doing at the slightest hint of annoyance, displeasure, irritation, pain, etc. No more pushing through things.
Conclusion
The battle against resistance is an art. It is a subtle dance that if we learn, we can achieve everything we had hoped for. In addition, done correctly, we can make practice as enjoyable as soaking in the sun, reading a book, or any other normally pleasurable activity we enjoy (besides eating pizza).
Know that this crossroads you are at right now, wanting to not practice, wanting to take a day off, is precisely the day when you must make a choice. On the long run, these choices aggregate over time and you want the right results through these aggregations. So be aware and control your feelings. Grab your guitar, paint brushes, flex your knuckles. Win the micro-decisions every day and overcome the evil of resistance. I gotta go practice…
