{"id":14815,"date":"2011-07-13T11:58:45","date_gmt":"2011-07-13T15:58:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nomeatathlete.com\/?p=14815"},"modified":"2019-11-06T11:52:14","modified_gmt":"2019-11-06T16:52:14","slug":"resistance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nomeatathlete.com\/resistance\/","title":{"rendered":"The Thing that Keeps You From Doing Great Things"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Somewhere inside your head, my head, and everyone else&#8217;s head is a traitor.&nbsp; Meet <a href=\"https:\/\/sethgodin.typepad.com\/seths_blog\/2010\/01\/quieting-the-lizard-brain.html\">the Resistance<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The job of the Resistance is to keep you where you are.&nbsp; Because where you are is safe, and it&#8217;s pretty tough to fail when you&#8217;re standing still.<\/p>\n<h2>What the Resistance looks like<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>When you stare, paralyzed, at the signup page for your<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nomeatathlete.com\/marathon-roadmap-3-0\/\"> first marathon<\/a>, telling yourself that the jump from 13.1 to 26.2 is just too great, that&#8217;s the Resistance.<\/li>\n<li>When instead of just <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nomeatathlete.com\/choose-first-marathon\/\">choosing a race<\/a>, you research it to death until you finally decide on doing nothing, that&#8217;s the Resistance.<\/li>\n<li>When you want to stop eating animals or putting junk in your body, but all you can hear are reasons why you can&#8217;t &#8212; your family, your work schedule, your friends &#8212; that&#8217;s the Resistance.<\/li>\n<li>When you give in to the craving and eat the junk, that&#8217;s <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">not<\/span> the Resistance.&nbsp; But when you bought the junk at the store because you knew you&#8217;d be craving it, that was the Resistance, doing its best to keep you the way you are.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>It&#8217;s easy to recognize the Resistance when it shows up as fear.&nbsp; It&#8217;s a lot harder when it&#8217;s in disguise. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Have you ever noticed that when you finally sit down (or stand up) to do something that&#8217;s important to you, that&#8217;s when every distraction in the world shows up?<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>You sit down to read, and you realize you&#8217;re hungry.&nbsp; Or thirsty.&nbsp; Or that there&#8217;s a show on now you can try to catch while you read.<\/p>\n<p>You open up your computer to write, but first you check your email.&nbsp; And then Facebook.&nbsp; And then you remember that bill you have to pay, so you do that.<\/p>\n<p>You&#8217;re ready to start a new training plan, to really get yourself in shape.&nbsp; But you know, you really could use a new pair of shoes before you start.&nbsp; Or maybe you should just wait until next week, after that big thing that requires you to eat \/ drink \/ be busy is over.<\/p>\n<h2>See what&#8217;s happening?<\/h2>\n<p>These are crucial moments.&nbsp; They&#8217;re crossroads, where you&#8217;re just about to do something that literally changes the direction your life is headed.&nbsp; And this is when the Resistance gets really clever.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m just recovering from a bloody battle with the Resistance myself.&nbsp; You see, I&#8217;m very fortunate to have recently been able to make this internet thing my job.&nbsp; My real, only job; my source of putting food on the table for my family.<\/p>\n<p>Naturally, with this new importance of what used to be just a hobby, I decided I need to start treating it right.<\/p>\n<p>So I made the website look better.&nbsp; Then I caught up on the 350 emails sitting in my inbox.<\/p>\n<p>But then before I could sit down to write, I organized my office.&nbsp; After all, the creativity&#8217;s gotta be able to flow.<\/p>\n<p>Then I cleaned up my desk.<\/p>\n<p>And then I moved icons around on my computer screen.<\/p>\n<p>Though I didn&#8217;t realize it, this was all the Resistance.&nbsp; Given the new importance of writing, it became scarier (and harder) than ever before.&nbsp; And good old Resistance showed up, innocently enough, in the form of easy, mindless stuff that was seemingly good.&nbsp; Necessary.&nbsp; Urgent!<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve faced similar things with running, and you probably have, too.&nbsp; You know you should be running.&nbsp; You even <em>want <\/em>to be running.&nbsp; And yet, for a variety of reasons (some of which sound really, really legit), you&#8217;re not running.<\/p>\n<p>It should be called runner&#8217;s block.&nbsp; It&#8217;s no different from what writers and artists face.&nbsp; In both situations, the hard, essential thing &#8212; the reason all the peripheral equipment, plans, goals, and talk even exist &#8212; is the one thing that&#8217;s not getting done, and you can&#8217;t explain why not.<\/p>\n<h2>How you beat the Resistance<\/h2>\n<p>During my little bout with all of this, I read all about it (another form of Resistance, I suppose).&nbsp; Steven Pressfield is the guy who coined the term, in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/B00475AUWW\/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=nomeaath-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=217145&amp;creative=399373&amp;creativeASIN=B00475AUWW\"><em>War of Art<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>And, after 160 pages, I&#8217;ve learned that the way to beat the Resistance as it tries to keep you from running, working, or anything else, is ridiculously simple, and disappointingly non-shortcutty:<\/p>\n<p>Act.&nbsp; Do whatever it takes to get yourself to do it one time.&nbsp; Then again.&nbsp; Then again.<\/p>\n<p>With writing, it&#8217;s about sitting down for a few minutes every day to produce <em>something<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>With running, it&#8217;s about getting out the door and putting one foot in front of the other.&nbsp; For five minutes even, if that&#8217;s all you can mentally commit to.<\/p>\n<p>Do it one time, and all the sudden the Resistance doesn&#8217;t look quite so big and bad.<\/p>\n<p>Then when you go to do the important-but-scary thing again the next day, it&#8217;s just a tiny bit easier.&nbsp; And then with every word, step, mile, blog post, and workout, you build momentum, until your mojo is undeniably back.<\/p>\n<p>So next time you&#8217;re ready to do something that matters &#8212; something that&#8217;s hard, maybe even scary &#8212; be aware that the little diversions that pop up to prevent you from acting aren&#8217;t just innocent coincidences.&nbsp; They&#8217;re the handiwork of the Resistance, and their sole purpose is stop you from doing something great so you take the safe, easy path instead.<\/p>\n<p>And if you don&#8217;t recognize that and take control, rest assured, the Resistance will.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Somewhere inside your head, my head, and everyone else&#8217;s head is a traitor.&nbsp; Meet the Resistance. The job of the Resistance is to keep you where you are.&nbsp; Because where you are is safe, and it&#8217;s pretty tough to fail when you&#8217;re standing still. What the Resistance looks like When you stare, paralyzed, at the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"wprm-recipe-roundup-name":"","wprm-recipe-roundup-description":"","_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-14815","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-motivation","7":"entry"},"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.1.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The Thing that Keeps You From Doing Great Things | No Meat Athlete<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"How to 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