Today I am going to describe three more blocks to motivation, resistance, procrastination and excuses. Let’s start with:
RESISTANCE
Physical Law – For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
We can define resistance as any force, coming from internal thoughts, or external situations or people that oppose your goals or chosen action.
When you find yourself putting up resistance to achieve something, you may see it as an opportunity to reaffirm your goals. Acknowledge the resistance and refocus on what you want to achieve.
There are two types of resistance, internal and external, but the result of both is the same, it stops us from achieving what we want.
You can overcome internal resistance by following these steps:
1. Observe yourself objectively. To accomplish this use the technique of the objective witness. This technique is when you look at yourself as if you were outside of yourself, without emotions, or preconceptions. As if you were someone else watching you. What are you thinking? What do you feel?
2. Consult with your Higher Self. You do this through mental silence. Be quiet and listen to your intuition.
3. Take a small step towards the goal. If you break the goal down into small steps and only focus on the step to take, you can let go of resistance.
4. Give yourself emotional support. Surround yourself with people who share your dreams and put aside those people who paralyze you.
How we can overcome external resistance:
1. The effect of the mirror. Look outside of yourself to see what your mirror tells you. What comments do other people make to you? What kinds of situations are coming into your life? Examine everything carefully, knowing that they are messages for you, since there is nothing outside of yourself.
2. When other people hold us back. Many times your close ones feel threatened with your progress. This is because they fear a change in the relationship. Try to reassure them with compassion, but don’t let them hold you back.
3. Consider distancing yourself if necessary.
4. Stay focused on your inner guidance.
5. Learn to focus.
What you resist persists. Resistance is a powerful force that, by the law of attraction, attracts more of what we resist, until we release the resistance and transfer our energy to more positive things or states.
Overcoming resistance requires frequent self-assessment to deal with the inner beliefs that are causing our resistance.
PROCRASTINATION
Procrastination is the opposite of the saying “don’t put off for tomorrow what you can do today.” He who procrastinates leaves for tomorrow what he can do today.
There are two types of procrastination, habitual and occasional procrastination.
Behind the habitual procrastination there are two fears.
- One is the fear of doing things wrong. We can face this fear by recognizing that failure doesn’t exist. When things don’t go well for us, it’s only an example of how they are not done.
- The other is the fear of not meeting our previous expectations. We can help ourselves to leave this fear behind when we understand that we aren’t perfect and sometimes things turn out better than others. We are our strongest critics. We demand perfection from ourselves and punish ourselves when we fail.
The occasional procrastination is our inner guide in disguise. It is the way that our inner being has to tell us that “that’s not the way.”
How can we tell the difference between the two types of procrastination? When you start a project try to notice if you feel that you are going against the current, or flowing with it. If when you’ve been working on the task for a while, you feel like you are forcing yourself to do it, try putting it down for a while and switching to another activity. If you then feel an inner urge to return to it, do so. If not, it may be that your Inner Guide is directing you in another direction. With practice you will distinguish between the two situations more easily.
EXCUSES
Many times we get discouraged when we want to do a task, giving ourselves excuses, which are not necessarily valid, for not doing them.
Examples of some:
1. I am too old for that.
2. I am too young for that.
3. I don’t have enough experience in that area.
4. I don’t have a college preparation.
5. I will go back to school when the children grow up.
How can you overcome excuses? One way is to ask yourself the following when you realize that you are allowing excuses to limit you:
If you knew how to do this, how would you do it?
Or, if the excuse was not an obstacle, what would you do now?
Your mind knows the answers to those questions. I just needs you to do it. So I encourage you to go ahead and do it.