We face resistance every day, all day! In the first few hours of my day I can already see it – some days I give in to it and other days I overpower it!
At any given moment of a day we are faced with a decision – to resist or not. Do we do what we know we should be doing, or do we find quasi-valid reasons to not do them? How often at the end of a day do we look back and say ‘what did I accomplish today’ and realize that all we did was resist doing what we needed, or even wanted, to do?
I can’t tell you how many times I sit down to read a book or work on a project to be interrupted by a text or message on my phone and then I end up going from one thing to the next on my phone for an hour! It’s easy to get lost in the resistance of doing even what we want to do!
Every morning we have a chance to start our day giving in to resistance or overcoming it! I believe that how we start the day can have an effect on the rest of the day. I notice a difference in the days when I start it out by hitting the snooze button until I absolutely have to get up versus the days I get up and go the first time my alarm goes off. Even with knowing the difference it is still so easy to let resistance take control. I know the tools that help me to overcome resistance, but sometimes I even resist them!
Matthew Kelly suggests that there is one way to overcome resistance and that is to NAME IT. “Simply naming, defining, and learning to recognize resistance in the moments of our days causes it to lost most of its power over us” (page 4).
What name would you give resistance in your life? Do you recognize where/when resistance has taken over in your day?