We all encounter resistance to the thing we have in mind to do.

The one theme that’s common for every person I’ve observed in my years of coaching is the fact that we all encounter resistance to the thing we have in mind to do. Whether it’s when we know what we have to do but can’t get ourselves to do it, or we have no clue where to even start.

The standard model for working through any difficult project is to put your head down and just do it. Don’t even think about it.

But if you’re the kind of person that can’t get yourself to do things out of sheer willpower, then this will never work for you. You can’t have feelings and then ignore them as part of your solution… that’s like trying to build a house on top of a giant boulder and pretending it isn’t there. 😆 And frankly, this is rhetoric we commonly get from men because they’ve been socialized to be stoic and unemotional. As humans, we’re never going to be able to erase our reactivity even though we possess the software to override it.

Instead, follow this process:

Feel it
Release it
Do it

Whether because of fear (or something else?), there’s some emotion hindering you from taking action. It’s not the emotion that needs to be resolved; those will always be there despite what our more logical friends may say.

Your job is then to actively release the hold that the emotion has on you. The standard approach is to reason yourself into the action you’ll take. You tell yourself you’ll feel better after your workout in order to get yourself to do it. Or that your career will flourish if you complete the second degree you started.

Instead, let the feeling go. Visualization, meditation, tapping, etc. are all great things to try. When you work with me, we uncover the things that work best for you. Including some great exercises I’ve created, if I do say so myself.

Release the feeling until the point where the doing has no emotional weight. It’s simply an action that you orient your body to take - in the same way that you have no resistance to brushing your teeth, taking a shower, or wiping the counter. It’ll be as easy and simple to perform as something that you do every day without thinking.

Give that a try and let me know how it works for you.