Episode #366 – Reframing Resistance: How Struggling Might Show You’re on the RIGHT Path

I’m Cherylanne Skolnicki, and this is Brilliant Balance, the show for working women who are ready to shine. Each week, I bring you ideas, inspiration, and insight on balance, business, and getting it all done gracefully. You ready? Let’s be brilliant.

This is episode 366 of the Brilliant Balance Podcast, “Reframing Resistance: How Struggling Might Show You That You’re on the Right Path.” And yes, that’s what I said—struggle might show that you’re on the right path. It’s quite a paradox, and it’s the one I want to dig into with you today.

I was thinking this weekend about the first time I read Steven Pressfield’s book, The War of Art. It is one of my favorite books. In that book, he introduces the concept of resistance, a concept I return to time and time again when I find myself facing a wall of not wanting to do something, right? When the struggle is real, when I am looking at a task, project, or idea, and I think, “Nothing in me wants to do this. This feels like walking into fire,” I remember Steven and his work. It is a great source of comfort, inspiration, and energy.

As I was thinking about what I wanted to share with you in today’s episode, that was the concept that kept coming back to mind. I remembered that I had done an episode on this many moons ago, and so I am going to air that episode for you today with this new intro. It’s interesting, isn’t it? How the same lesson can take on a different color, feel different, and land differently when we hear it at a different moment in time.

The first time this episode aired, it was back in January 2020. Remember, pre-COVID? January 2020, we were pre-COVID, and we didn’t know what was coming. Yet, this subject was on my mind. I was thinking about what it felt like to be pushing through resistance. So, you’ll hear a little reference to New Year’s resolutions since it was originally recorded in January. Yet, here I am recording this in the fall of 2024, and the lesson is as relevant as ever. I hope that’s true for you too, whether this is the first time you’re hearing it or whether you were around back in 2020 when I shared it. I think you’ll find fresh insight to meet you right where you are.

So here we are. We’re going to dive into the concept of resistance—how it shows up in your life and what it can show you about reframing the resistance you’re experiencing as evidence that perhaps you’re on the right path after all.

First question today: I want you to think back about a month or so ago to when you were setting your goals, resolutions, or plans for this year. We started a brand-new decade, and everyone was excited about 2020 and what they were going to accomplish. I want you to put yourself in the headspace of who you were around January 1st when you were setting your goals for the year. Specifically, I want you to think about how you thought it would feel to make those changes. If you were honest with yourself, did you think it would be easy, or did you think it would be hard? Did you expect smooth sailing, or did you expect setbacks?

I want you to think about that, and then I want you to ask yourself, “What has actually happened?” In that month or so since you set those goals or established the resolution, what has really happened in your life? I’m willing to bet there have been a few setbacks because that’s life, right? That is normal. I think if I’m honest, and certainly as I think about my experience coaching women, many times our paradigm is that it’s going to be easy. We think, “I just haven’t done this yet, but this isn’t that hard.” We tell ourselves, “It’s so simple, right? I’m just going to exercise, drink more water, or stay organized.” But then life comes at us, and it feels like no sooner do we make the decision to do the thing, whatever it is for you, than this massive wall of resistance raises itself in front of us.

When I talk about resistance, and we’re going to dig into this today, I’m talking about that almost invisible force that seems designed to keep you from making progress. Once we’ve set a goal out loud, once we’ve told somebody our resolution or plan, it isn’t long after that that the force of resistance rises up. Often, we take that as a sign that we’re on the wrong path or that it’s too hard, so maybe we’re not supposed to do this after all, or maybe it’s not the right time for us, and we give up. It’s like we view it as a big sign from the universe saying, “Not this way. You’re going the wrong way,” because we’ve somehow internalized a message that the right goals will just open pathways, and we would walk through them, and things would be kind of easy.

Now, I’m poking you on this on purpose because you might be sitting there saying, “No, I know it’s not easy.” But does your behavior align with that? When it happens to you, as opposed to when you see someone else and you’re encouraging them, do you think, “Of course, it’s hard, but you’re doing great; keep at it?” Is that the same dialogue you have with yourself? Because sometimes, there’s a double standard at play.

Here’s the thing, though: resistance, and again, I’m going to define this in a moment, is the force that lets us keep growing. Think about going to the gym and lifting weights, right? What do we call it? Resistance training, right? We’re using resistance against our muscles, intentionally putting them under tension so that they can grow and get stronger. Or consider the laws of aerodynamics. For a plane to rise into the sky, it has to push against something—against a force, exerted upward by the air underneath it. Without that force, it wouldn’t take flight; it would stay grounded. And that’s also called resistance.

Resistance is something we understand scientifically, whether we’re building muscles or flying airplanes, but we don’t necessarily think about it psychologically. And that’s the territory of resistance that I want to explore today. That force, and I’m calling it resistance because of Steven Pressfield, can look really menacing when it stands between us and our goals, but I’m going to argue that it’s actually 100% necessary and something you should probably even welcome when it shows up.

We’re going to approach this in four parts. First, I want to talk about what resistance is in this context. Then, how does it show up? How do you recognize it for what it is? What is it telling you? What is the presence of that force actually indicating? And finally, what do you do about it?

I’m going to pull my definition from Steven Pressfield, who wrote a book called The War of Art. I may have even mentioned this book on the podcast before because it is probably in my top 10 list of all time. In The War of Art, Steven Pressfield asserts that anything we try to do—anything that is good for us, good for society, creative, new, or exciting—calls into being this force that he calls “the resistance.” He named it “the resistance,” and it always opposes change or anything that’s new.

For example, let’s say you feel called to start a new business. You want to dip a toe into a side hustle or start an entrepreneurial venture. Resistance will be the voice that tells you to stay in your current job and not take a risk because the project may fail, you might be embarrassed, you might lose money, and all the things, right? If you instead want to start a new way of eating, thinking, “It’s time to put good food in this body,” resistance will be the voice that tells you, “I can start that tomorrow. Today, there’s football games on, or we’re having people over. I can start that tomorrow.”

If you think back on all the times in your life when you’ve embarked on a journey to do something new, good, or growth-oriented, I’m willing to bet you’ve experienced resistance each and every time. I certainly have, which is why I fell in love with this book and this concept because it gave a name to something I had experienced so often.

Let’s paint a picture of how it shows up, moving out of the theoretical into the practical. One way resistance shows up is through rationalizing. This is the voice that says you can’t do X because of Y, right? You can’t start that business; you don’t know anything about sales, or you don’t have an MBA. You can’t volunteer for that; you don’t have experience. You can’t eat that way; every time you’ve tried, you’ve failed. This rationalization sounds very logical. The voice of resistance is not hysterical; it is often very logical, making so much sense. “You can’t start that now; your husband is facing an illness.” It’s not practical for you to start that right now.

So rationalizing is something we almost don’t call resistance; we just think it’s normal. We think that’s how we’re talking to ourselves—that’s just life. But that is one that I see over and over again in my own life, and it is probably the number one or number two that I see among women I coach.

The second way that resistance shows up is what I call the “what ifs.” This is fear and anxiety rising to levels that feel intolerable. “What if this happens? What if that happens?” All of the “what ifs” start running through our heads, making us think about how this path we’re on is going to lead to doom and disaster. So fear and anxiety can include fears like the fear of being embarrassed, fear of being seen, fear of what other people will think, and fear of all the “what ifs” that come up when you embark on something new.

In Pressfield’s case, he talks about being an author and writing a book. When he was discovering this concept, he had an unfinished manuscript that he just couldn’t seem to finish. He met a neighbor who happened to be a published author and taught him some principles about pushing through resistance. Much of the book is written under the premise of creative pursuits, and then he extrapolates the concept to other areas where the same force shows up. Writing a book is a dream I’ve talked about with many women, and there’s a lot of fear and anxiety that comes with it—“What if I write it and I can’t get it published? What if I write it and nobody likes it? What if it doesn’t sell, and I’m embarrassed?”—all of those “what ifs” and the anxiety that comes with them.

So many of our fears are rooted in being seen, and then, after we are seen, not being thought well of. If we keep breaking down the fear, we often find that at the root is, “What if I’m not enough? What if I do this thing and I’m not enough?” That is the second way resistance shows up. Essentially, you talk yourself out of the thing in order to avoid the possibility of a negative outcome. You think, “Well, if I never write the book, I’ll never know that it didn’t sell a lot of copies because it won’t even have the chance to.” If I don’t start the business, I’ll never know that it is going to fail, and I won’t have to deal with that pain. So we stop before we start because of the fear of a potential negative outcome, ignoring, by the way, the positive. Ignoring, “What if it becomes a bestseller?” Ignoring, “What if we actually succeed?”

The third way resistance can show up—and this one I see all the time—is that resistance will throw up distractions that require our attention. It’s like, “Uh-oh, someone needs you right now more than you need to be doing this thing.” And we will talk ourselves out of having the time, headspace, or energy to pursue the thing we want because someone else needs us. “Oh, it’s just a really busy season at work, so it’s not a good time for me to do it,” or “It’s a really busy season for my kids’ sports,” or “It’s a really busy season for my husband’s favorite hobby,” or “Somebody in my family is ill or going through something that requires my attention,” or “I’m just not feeling 100% yet, so I can’t really give it my all.” These distractions are never-ending.

Distractions can be micro, keeping us out of the game for a day or a weekend, or they can be big distractions that last for years, making us think, “It’s not my time yet.” That is a big one—the “uh-oh, someone or something else needs me right now, so I can’t possibly do this.”

And the fourth way that resistance shows up is a very loud inner critic. We’ve talked about the inner critic on this podcast before. This is that voice in your head that isn’t actually your voice but is the voice that’s not very nice to you. In this case, the inner critic says some version of, “Who do you think you are?” “Who do you think you are to do this thing? You have no business doing this. You have no qualifications, no rights. You are going to fail.” The inner critic is kind of the last fortress of defense, and it will get increasingly loud, even hysterical, in an effort to stop you from stepping outside of your comfort zone and doing the new thing.

Any one of those—rationalizing, fear, anxiety, distractions, or the inner critic—could be enough to get us to call it quits. Two or more of these working together, and we almost surely will abandon our plan. So, if you find that you are dealing with, “Oh, here’s this massive distraction—somebody else needs me,” and your inner critic is saying, “By the way, you’d probably fail at this anyway,” you are very likely to abandon your plan.

But before you do that, before any of us do that, I want to ask: What is the resistance actually telling you? What is the message that the very presence of this force is telling you? It’s telling you that what lies ahead represents growth, that you are entering uncharted territory for you. And because of that, there’s fear. It feels uncomfortable; it feels different. And the degree of fear actually equates to the strength of the resistance. So the more fear that we feel, the louder these voices of the inner critic, the more frequent the rationalizing and distractions, the more sure we can be that what we’re thinking about doing is really important to us—important to our growth, maybe to our legacy, and to the people around us. The more scared we are of a piece of work or of a calling, the more sure we can be that we actually have to do it. And here’s why: if it meant nothing to us, there would be no resistance. If it weren’t going to help us grow, there would be no resistance.

When something is easy—like skipping through a field of daisies—it’s just fun, it’s easy, we’ve done it before, there’s nothing hard about it. When you have to stare down that fear, when you have to stare down the distractions, when you have to talk your inner critic off the ledge, that’s dragon-slaying, right? That is facing the thing that scares you and realizing later that you were bigger than that thing all along.

So today, whenever resistance shows up in my life, I actually get a little tingly. I get a little excited because I know it means I’m on the right path. This really matters to me; I care. I’m willing to care, and I’m willing to push against this force to get where I want to go. It actually becomes the thing that can propel you forward to where you want to be.

Now, discerning whether you’re dealing with resistance or a giant stop sign telling you, “This is not the right path for you,” takes a little bit of practice. I’m going to give you an analogy that came to me this morning. I had just finished working out for the day, and I was getting ready, knowing I was going to record this today. And I thought, “There’s the analogy I need.” The difference between “this is resistance” and “this is a giant stop sign” is the same as, “Wow, my muscles are sore and tired because I worked out hard, and muscles are developing under there—good things are coming,” and, “Wow, I just got an injury. I pulled a muscle, or I tore a tendon, or something is wrong.”

Anybody who has worked out knows the kind of pain that comes from exertion is entirely different from the kind of pain that comes from injury. There’s an acute nature to the pain that says, “You just got injured, and you need to see a doctor and take some time off.” And then there’s the kind of discomfort or burning that comes from exertion—your muscles are tired, they’ve been strained, and it took a lot of force, but good things are coming.

And if you’ve worked out for a while, you know the difference. It’s the same with resistance. So this is not a podcast about staying in an abusive relationship because it’s all going to get better. This is not a podcast saying you should stay in a job you hate because it’s making you stronger. You have to learn to discern between “This is a giant red stop sign telling me to get off this path,” and “This is a low-grade discomfort that is tolerable because there’s growth on the other side.” I want to make sure we draw that distinction.

So, when you’re sure that you’re dealing with resistance and not acute pain, there’s a line in Pressfield’s book that I think can help us. He says, “You beat resistance with perspiration, not inspiration. Resistance fears commitment, craft, and dedication.” I’m going to read it again: “You beat resistance with perspiration, not inspiration. Resistance fears commitment, craft, and dedication.”

Here’s the thing: when resistance shows up, you have to recognize it and then leverage it. This is when you double down, right? You push against it. You feel yourself getting stronger, just like grabbing that heavier weight at the gym. Beating it takes work, and it takes work even when you don’t feel like it. So, when you’re saying, “Oh, I can’t do this today. It’s rainy,” or, “I can’t do this today. I don’t feel 100 percent,” or, “I can’t do this today because I’m really busy,” even when you don’t feel like it, and you do the thing anyhow—that’s when you get growth.

Like I said, at this point, I kind of get excited when I notice that the resistance is out in full force because it’s like a signal that I am on exactly the right track—that the work I’m trying to do is important, that it matters. Sometimes I probably curse first and fuss about why everything has to be so hard because I’m human, right? But then I remember that it always gets harder right before I’m about to level up, and it probably means the same for you.

I have been staring this down hard over the last couple of months in some areas of my business and life where I am really standing on the precipice of going to the next level. Lots and lots of things rise up. At this point, I am embracing all of that resistance and saying, “Okay, here’s my sign that these are exactly the right next steps, and I’m going to hold hands with my team, and we are going to walk through this force field so that we can get to the other side.”

And I would be happy to hold hands with you and help you walk yourself through that force that’s trying to knock you down. So, consider this: When you’re staring at that resistance, and it’s taking any of the forms we talked about today—whether it’s rationalizing (“You can’t do X because of Y”), whether it’s fear or anxiety saying, “What if this terrible thing happens?”, whether it’s distractions telling you, “This is not a good time,” or whether it’s a very loud inner critic saying, “Who do you think you are to do this? You don’t deserve it; it’s not going to work”—I want you to take my hand and push against it, right? Let yourself get stronger. Let yourself move to the other side and see where that leads. You’re going to love it when you find out what’s on the other side of this force.

Okay, well, thank you for tuning in today for this reprise episode. I am just delighted by how this podcast audience continues to expand and grow. I know that we have new listeners arriving every week, and if you are new to the show and enjoyed today’s episode and have not yet had a chance to subscribe, I would ask you to do that now. It’s such a quick step to click that follow or subscribe button, and it means so much to me as the podcast host. The more followers we have, the more the show is shared with people as a recommendation, and that means so much to me. Also, it ensures that you’ll never miss an episode—it will get pushed into your podcast queue wherever you listen.

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