The Resistance

There’s a secret that healthy fit pros know that others who don’t achieve their fitness goals don’t.

Its not the actual exercise or eating the healthy foods that is the hard part. The hardest part is keeping the show going long enough to achieve results & actually learn something…
Anyone who has transformed his or her health & fitness has developed a very unique & powerful skill.

They learned how to fight Resistance

Resistance is a force that we all know very well.

•  It’s the voice that suggests we hit the snooze button when we wake up.
• It’s the impulsive thought to neglect our goals
• It’s the urge to eat what everyone else is eating so we fit in.
• It’s the voice that trains us to procrastinate.
• It’s the voice that reasons with us to quit.
• It’s the voice that seeks to blame others for our mistakes.

Resistance is a force that works very hard to keep you as you are.

Most of us live two lives. The life we live & the unlived life with in us. Between the two stands Resistance. Think about your current life style, you’re likely to do the same activities, eat the same foods & sleep around the same amount. Essentially you are a master of maintaining your current lifestyle, you practice every day.
We are the result of what we practice.

What if the current life we mastered is holding us back from living life at the highest levels?

Our own nature can sabotage our ability to experience & participate in life. We slowly begin to lose freedom without even being aware of it.

• Your health declines slowly & steadily
• You have less energy.
• You aren’t happy as often.
• You don’t socialize as much.
• You feel negativity towards the world.
• Facing our Resistance is the only way to make any kind of progress in this life. Fighting our Resistance is a fight for our personal freedom to experience life on our terms. In other words
• We learn how to control our impulsivity.
• We focus on the long-term growth.
• We learn how to stay committed.
• We learn that our fight with resistance is connected to our participation in life.
• We link our freedom to our ability to handle Resistance.

Know your enemy

Resistance is Invisible – It can’t be seen, touched, heard or smelled. It can only be felt.

Resistance is Insidious- Resistance will tell you anything to keep you from following through with your goals. It will seduce you like a lover, reason with you like a top lawyer, & force commands like a stick up man. It will pledge anything to get a deal, then double cross you as soon as you turn your back. If you take Resistances word you deserve everything you get.

Resistance is Impersonal- Resistance is not out to get you personally. It doesn’t know who you are & doesn’t care. Resistance is a force of nature it acts objectively.

Resistance is Universal- We’re wrong if we think we’re the only ones struggling with Resistance. Every person on this earth experiences Resistance.

Resistance never Sleeps- We will never shed our feelings of Resistance. We only learn how to manage this force for our benefit over our peril.

Resistance plays for keeps- The goal of Resistance is not to wound or disable our effort it aims to kill. Resistance means business, when we fight it we are in a war to the death. “It’s better to live on your feet than die on your knees” – Unknown

Resistance is fueled by fear, it has no strength of its own. We feed it with power from fear of it. Master that fear & we conquer Resistance.

The important the goal is to our evolution the more resistance you will face.
By Steven Pressfield (The war of art)

The 3 Domains of Resistance by Julio Ybarra

*Internal *External *Biological

Internal (Self Sabotage)
The strongest levels of resistance exist in our mind. Signs of internal Resistance include.

• Rationalization
• Procrastination
• Self-dramatization
• Criticism
• Victimhood
• Self-doubt
• Blaming others for everything
• Fear

These characteristics are natural aspects of our mind. However allowing these characteristics to dwell & take root in our everyday thinking will eventually immobilize our effort to evolve in life. The first step in addressing internal Resistance is becoming aware of its presence. Become the active observer of your own thinking patterns. It is amazing how unaware we can become of our thinking patterns. The trick is once you notice these thoughts, we actively begin to label these thoughts for what they are “Internal Resistance”. Now that you are aware of your internal resistance, the next step is to understand this is a symptom of a different problem.

High amounts of internal resistance can be a result of a lack of faith or clarity in your ability or goals

We need to see things as they are. Our mind can disguise our true feelings very well. We create illusion that shifts our energy to outside sources. We create stories; blame our past, environment, & others. All this effort is used to push the truth further & further away from our conscious selves. Why go through all this trouble?
“Our nature is to avoid pain & gain pleasure”

Its much more pleasurable to blame outside sources for our effort instead of our selves. Fighting any type of resistance creates fiction. The friction tells the truth. Our effort in fighting our resistance, holds a mirror up to what your actually willing to do to over come the resistance, even when you are the source of it.

How to stop Internal Resistance

Boosting your faith in your ability to achieve your health & fitness goals means taking a deeper look at your strategy. Maybe your current strategy is missing one of the 4 key components to make real progress?

• The right knowledge.
• A system that works with your lifestyle.
• Support
• Feedback

The Right Knowledge
We are lucky to live in one of the most advanced eras of our time! We also live in an era with an abundance of information. First how do we determine what’s credible? Second what information is relevant to your goals?(define credible information) (then refer to how to create goals in the next paragraph)

Means to an end (how to design goals) – use the exercise from T.E.M

It’s much more pleasurable to move with resistance instead of facing it

What’s the point of all this effort anyway?

Like I said earlier we are masters of our current lifestyle. This lifestyle isn’t all that bad right? I mean we know what to expect, it’s simple & understandable. Why change something we know so well?

Did Internal Resistance almost sway you there? Stay with me, your freedom is at stake!

External Resistance

Biological Resistance