Resistance and Embracing Your Nature

and how to beat resistance with action

Apr 08, 2024

I don’t want to write this piece for a thousand reasons.

I’m tired and catching up on sleep would reward Future Nick.

I’m enjoying a book and Present Nick would love to keep up the enjoyment.

It’s hot, and I’d rather splay out on the floor in an unfit-for-public level of nakedness, waiting for the breeze to cool me down.

But I’m not that tired to justify option A, and the book isn’t going to disappear in the next hour to justify option B, and I can be equally naked at the laptop if I so choose, so that’s zero from three.

Which brings me to the root: I can’t be fucked, I don’t want to do it.

I am resisting it.

For me, the resistance to writing is the litmus test of resistance to action in life. It’s not about picking up the pen (or tapping the keys), but about seeing the actions in life that need taking but are hard, difficult, uncomfortable, or scary, and not wanting to do them.

Resistance can be broken down into groups, like uncertainty, perfectionism, or lack of qualification, but what’s beneath (or above) resistance?

My gut says that it's fear.

I’m not sure enough. It’s not good enough. I’m not educated enough.

The thing that I’m resisting doing, I’m afraid of doing, because it will reflect on me, and if I’m not confident in myself then it will reflect poorly on me.

I want to write about resistance, but I don’t know what I really want to write about when I write about resistance. Rather than sit with the uncertainty and let it fester, I put hundreds of words on the page and see a couple of angles that can be worked with.

The process allows my certainty to form and crystallise. It isn’t perfect and won’t ever be perfect, but it is taking form and there ends resistance. The action of writing is educating me on what I actually want to write about.

I’ve been falling into this trap quite a bit lately: sit down, open book, write thoughts, scrunch up nose, close book, question every layer of life, determine that writing is the problem, and leave the table.

But writing isn’t the problem, not writing is the problem. Piggybacking off the theme I talked about last week of intention, I am coming at this from the wrong angle.

Since I’ve started to think along the lines of ‘when I write it needs to be good enough to publish, or it needs to talk about something’, the simple act of writing has started to go from being a passion to a chore, an expression to a work process.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is precisely where my resistance demon rears his head. 500 words in and I find the gem. Let’s put some polish on that sucker, shall we?

The second I feel that I’m working, I don’t want to do it anymore. What I’m doing has ceased to be inspirational, free-moving, or engaging.

And I have as close to no time for that shit as humanly possible. You could say I am intensely resistant to the idea of work.

Work is a waste of my time. The things that I’m best at, that I get the most benefit from, and see the most big-picture results from, don’t feel like work.

That isn’t to say that there isn’t hard effort involved (there is) or that it always goes perfectly (it doesn’t), but – at least in my experience – it rarely feels as if I am doing work.

Work feels like a grind, a chore, a thing I’m doing because there is an external motivator driving me to do it, and my Resistance Rebel rears up rapidly.

I wrote and published a book. This was DEFINITELY WORK. But it never felt like work, because I never suffered the process.

I had moments of procrastination but they usually presented themselves when I didn’t know what I was meant to do next (which meant I had to research and find out), or I wasn’t happy with how something was presented (which means I had to edit it).

It didn’t mean I didn’t want to write the book, I never felt resistance to the idea of writing the book. I would just get caught up in the steps involved in the process.

‘Books have ISBNs. Where do I get an ISBN? No fucking idea. Naja, not that important, take a break.’

I’d wake up the next day and think ‘Everything you need to know is on the internet, you’re being lazy, just find out and do it’. And it really was that simple.

Resistance is overcome in an instant of action.

And that’s what is happening here. I am writing and writing and writing solely to overcome the resistance that I’ve been feeling.

I’ve been editing lots lately, and I’m certain I’m going to hack this post to pieces because half of it has been me getting my ass over the line, rather than adding value to the thing I’m writing.

But it’s keeping me engaged, it’s keeping the movement fresh, and it’s not allowing it to devolve into the dreaded feeling of work.

I am the boss on this page. I say what gets in, and what stays in. I decide what perfection looks like, and I decide how educated the author needs to be. So, why should I face resistance?

Do I want to be better than I currently am? Well, how am I – the flawed I – going to improve myself, if I am flawed? It’s a futile operation. I just gotta keep on going.

Because, as Popeye said, I am what I am.

Life is going to teach me some shit and I’m going to learn and grow as it happens, but am I ever going to be better than I am? Or am I simply going to have learnt some new stuff?

But getting all of this onto the page has been an exercise in overcoming a deeper resistance that's been cropping up in life. It’s subtle, but I can see it clearly now.

I have to come out and say it: I am a leader.

I know, I know. I moved to Germany and here I am, coming out as a leader. Don’t judge!

It’s a skill, a trait, a quality I have. It’s not something I went looking for, or try to use and abuse, it just is.

I can stand in front of a room full of people and talk, and I’m not bothered. I can host shit and it’s no sweat. I can negotiate multiple opinions and come to a mutual agreement.

And these are all handy skills as a leader. But you know the big one? The one that I have resisted, or perhaps denied, for fucking ages?

I inspire people, good or bad, without effort. It’s not something I want to do, nor is it something I choose to do, it’s just something that happens.

I rub off on people. Maybe I suggest ideas at the right time and place, maybe I have a little more of the Führer in me than I’d like to admit, but I think it's just something that some people have, and it looks like I’ve got it.

I recently created a writing group and last week over 10,000 words exploded into existence on the internet through this action. It’s looking like the same thing is going to occur again this week.

And that is where the resistance starts to come up.

‘Who are you to lead? Why should anyone listen to you? What do you have to offer anyone that they can’t get somewhere else?’

All valid questions, with no good enough answer, and I don’t propose that there is anything unique about me.

But I do what I do, and people do what I do, and I recognise a pattern sooner or later.

I am still overcoming this resistance that comes up when I think ‘I should create an…’ or ‘Maybe I should build a group around…’ because the proof is in the pudding.

The ideas aren’t all gold, but they seem to find the people who want them, and they start to give life.

This week, when a bunch of people all posted links to the things they published as a result of putting this group together, I was so fulfilled. Amount earnt: $0. Joy derived: undefinable.

Actual bank: let’s not talk about it. Karmic bank: I’m living good.

A quote from Minouche Shafik comes to mind, and it’s getting more and more prominence as time goes by: In the past jobs were about muscles, now they’re about brains, but in the future, they’ll be about the heart.

This is the future, we’re shifting to a heart-based world, and inspiring positive acts, and getting people to do things that they’re excited about doing is the big ticket item.

Know Thyself isn’t just a cliché, it’s probably the best piece of wisdom to come out of Western thought that I’ve yet found.

Because only when you know yourself, can you start to be yourself, all the way.

If you’re a 9 – 5 drone with absolutely no desire to have any creativity in your life, someone who is genuinely happy to clock in and clock out, do it.

Ignore people like me who are saying ‘there’s so much more to life than just working’ because, for you, my advice is wrong.

I’m speaking to a specific group of people, who’ll hear it and think ‘fuck yes, this guy knows what he’s talking about’.

Everyone else will think ‘I bet this guy takes psychedelics’.

All I want is for both groups to go on living their lives with as little resistance to their inherent nature as possible.

Judge away or jump on board. It’s your rainbow, as they used to say.

But if I can plant a small seed in the minds of all of you, supporters and detractors alike, let it be this: find where the points of internal resistance are, and let them resolve.

Nobody wants you to be better than you are, they want you to be who you are. They can choose to take you or leave you from there, but if you’re not showing up as who you are, you’re fucking it up for everyone.

Go forth and prosper. Tear out those roots of resistance and let the towering tree of Who You Truly Are stand tall.

Nick lets rip

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