Mindset Monday - Releasing Resistance

This is episode 258 of the Empowered Team Podcast. Welcome to the Empowered Team Podcast, where we explore how to optimize your performance in career, sport and life. And now your host, executive coach and life strategist, Kari Schneider. Welcome, empowered people, to another episode of the Empowered Team Podcast. And today we've got a Mindset Monday topic for you called releasing resistance. And I'm not talking about resistance training. I'm not talking about getting in the gym and bulking up. I am talking about the kind of resistance that we tend to carry around in our heads and then in our bodies and in our lives that doesn't serve us. So today we're going to talk about releasing resistance and I'm going to give you some of what hanging on to this resistance does, as well as some signs that you are having some resistance in your life and what it's doing and then how I personally release resistance so that you can perhaps try some of the things I do. So when I say resistance, normally, you know, we might think resistance training, we might think of refusing to comply or refusing to accept something, action, argument, whatever it is. But really we're talking about this side of emotional resistance or psychological resistance. It refers to the tendency to avoid, to suppress or even deny certain emotions or thoughts. And I don't know about you, but I have been in resistance in a number of areas of my life, especially when it comes to my business, my marriage, things that have happened in the world that I don't like. Then up comes this resistance that I experience. And I want to really distinguish here that I'm not suggesting by any means that we don't want to stand up for what we believe in, or we don't have a voice or we don't advocate for ourselves. It's not what I'm saying at all. What I'm talking about is this turmoil, this inner turmoil that we experience that actually holds us back from expressing ourselves and being our best selves and holds us back from operating in the world in the way that really gives to other people and shows up, allowing us to show up the way that we are really the most powerful. So when we are, when we are releasing resistance, we're actually increasing our emotional distress. We end up resisting, suppressing our emotions, resisting maybe experiences that we're having personally. And then we end up doing all sorts of things, but it also, resistance also impairs our personal growth. It interferes with the direction we really want to go. It impairs our decision making. We end up having emotions that provide These signals to us to help us make decisions and navigate life situations. But, but when we resist or ignore certain signals, then we're not able to make the decisions that we really want to. Resistance constrain our relationships, especially leading to difficulties in communication because we're not expressing ourselves fully. We resist our emotions. We end up struggling to communicate those needs, perhaps, or even feelings. And then it creates misunderstandings, distance, and a lack of emotional connection. And I can say that Paul and I have definitely experienced that. And ultimately, when we're doing a lot of this resistance, we end up having a physical consequence. We typically hold this energy as stress or tension in our bodies. And this prolonged emotional resistance ends up leading to, perhaps for a lot of us, chronic stress. Emotional suppression can lead to health issues. And this is something that ultimately has been a contributor to what I'm experiencing in Graves disease, which is not fun at all. And it's not fun for me to realize that a lot of the experiences that I've had in the past and I've had resistance around actually unpacking them. So these traumatic experiences, and then that's led to a physical, physical illness because of a chronic post traumatic stress situation, which is even now, I feel as I'm expressing that I don't even want to say that I don't want to express that on a podcast, no less, that's in a public forum. Because I don't like even sharing that part of things that I'm experiencing. And that's the resistance that really, by overcoming that, by expressing it, is very, very freeing. It's freeing for the mind, it's freeing for expression, it's freeing for our connection to other people, and it's freeing for our physicality as well. So here are some signs that you might be experiencing some resistance somewhere in your life. Maybe there's a little more anger. Usually this anger shows up in a fear resistance. For me anyway. I find that if I have anger with my husband, underneath that anger, there is usually some sort of fear of not being loved. If I find I'm having anger with my kids, there's usually some sort of fear that they're going to be hurt in some way. So anger is this. When I'm. When I'm angry, it's usually a sign that I'm resisting some sort of fear somewhere else that I'm not seeing in the initial moment. Other signs for me are things like suffering. Suffering is, if I boil it down to a simple sentence, it's our pain about our pain. So for instance, if I use the example of this diagnosis that I have of Graves disease, Graves disease is the pain. So all the symptoms that come with it, all of the problems that come with it, that's the pain. But the extra pain that I have over just the fact of the diagnosis or the fact that I'm experiencing those other things, that's an extra layer of pain. That is the easiest description of suffering that I can provide. It's this extra pain that we bring that we have a choice about, and we add an extra layer of pain that wasn't there before, simply about the pain that we already have. So we might have emotional distress, but then we're upset that we're in emotional distress. We might have an injury, but then we're upset that we have the injury. So it's that extra layer of upset and pain that is the suffering. And usually if we're in a lot of suffering, we are resisting the original emotional state or the original circumstance that has happened. And we're pushing against it so that suffering is almost always an indication that we have some sort of resistance somewhere. Disappointment, another version of that we're resisting that we didn't. We didn't like what actually happened. We're resisting what is. What the reality is. We might be resisting what other. Who other people are. And that's another version of disappointment. Other signs of resistance are things like avoidance behaviors. When we're engaging in activities or behaviors that are distracting from something else that we're resisting. We're afraid to hand in that final project, and so we spend too much time on Netflix. That would be avoidance behaviors. Emotional numbing can also be in those distracted behaviors. But it can be alcohol, it can be drugs, it can be becoming emotionally detached so we're not actually present to what we are feeling. If someone asks us, well, what do you feel? I don't know. I don't know what I feel about that. And that's just this emotional numbness, this detaching from what the actual problem is or the emotion is. And then there's recurring patterns. If you have some patterns in your life that keeps. Keep showing up over and over again that are problems, then chances are there's some level of stuckness, that some level of resistance around change, around seeing what the problem is. So that recurring pattern keeps showing up. And then there's the over intellectualizing. So this is another form of resistance by describing or arguing in circles around something without this. This over relying on this logical reasoning or intellectual analysis when confronted with something emotional. And it can be a way of avoiding the emotional depth of a situation by feeling more controlled, feeling like you're staying in control, by intellectualizing and bringing all the facts and making the argument. And then there's another sign that has shown up for me that when I couldn't see my own resistance in the world. The technical term is somatization. Somatization is when you have somatic experiences. It's a physical experience. It's a physical experience that comes about from the emotional experience. So what this means is that your body is expressing the distress in a physical symptom. So it might be headaches, it might be tension in the shoulders, it might be even a physical discomfort somewhere in your body. So this physical sign that there is resistance emotionally somewhere else in the world is a big one that finally ends up having someone. Me, for instance. See that, oh, wait, there was resistance somewhere in my life, and now it's showing up in this way. And then also when we find ourselves dismissing emotional states or minimizing emotions, I remember my dad saying over and over countless times in my life about how, oh, that person's so emotional, or just dismissing it, and then maybe he'd be in a relationship and saying that he didn't want that person to get emotional, or he didn't like it if I got emotional. And so that's a way of minimizing someone else's emotion or dismissing emotions and downplaying the significance of someone else's emotion, when really those emotions are something that are so valid, and it points to resisting the emotions themselves. So, and then lastly, it's. It's vulnerability is something that really creates a lot of trust and connection. And when someone has a real difficulty in expressing their own vulnerability, there's usually resistance there. And you witnessed that just moments ago. When I had a hard time, I could feel it in my body. I had this hard time expressing. Expressing that this autoimmune disease that I'm dealing with now largely stems from a chronic scenario of PTSD and being vulnerable in that way. I could feel the me wanting to not express that. That difficulty in expressing that vulnerability. Okay, so these are. These are a lot of the signs of resistance behavior. And ultimately, I think that there's probably something that you as a listener can recognize in any of those. Any of those scenarios. There's probably something you recognize in yourself. And I'm not saying that you do all of them all of the time. I'm saying that you probably have one or two of them that happen on the regular. And I'm sure that. Well, I'm not positive. But most of us will have experienced all of them at some point in our lives. And if we haven't, we probably will. Because as human creatures who have been conditioned in certain ways and are not necessarily socialized or taught to be emotionally aware and emotionally intelligent and emotionally expressive, then chances are we're going to be having some sort of resistance come up in our lives. And as leaders, I cannot emphasize this enough that in leadership, when we come up against resistance, it impairs our leadership. It impairs us in our ability to decision make, our ability to think, and our ability to really understand what's on, going, going on within ourselves. And that impairs our leadership. It impairs our connection to other people, our ability to make those decisions, and our ability to stand in our own personal power when we are resisting some parts of ourselves or parts of the world or parts of other people. So how do I personally release resistance? Because right now this is a massive practice of mine, a daily practice of mine, as part of my healing. And it's also something that I coach significantly in the leaders that I work with. Because it comes up for leaders a lot. It comes up for leaders a lot simply because they're faced with so much change and so much decision and so much flux in the world at all times. So resistance will naturally come up because we are human creatures and we don't necessarily like everything that's happening. We. But ultimately resistance is coming up because we don't like the reality. And when we fight with reality, that's when we're creating resistance, when we're trying to control something that's outside of our control, that's when we're creating resistance. So it can come up as a subtle, behind the scenes kind of passive resistance that we didn't realize was there. And then there's this active form of resistance where we're literally feeling, fighting against what is going on in the world or what came up, or our own emotions. And it takes our energy to a place that it doesn't need to go. So these practices that I am utilizing myself and that I coach with other people end up being so powerful for living a life with more direction and flow and ease. Ease, and I want to emphasize that word ease, because living with ease is so freeing. And oftentimes the kind of problems that come up for leaders, it constantly feels like there's resistance, resistance issues, problems, something to solve, fix it, something to fix. And when there's that feeling of constant management and problem solving and solution finding, then it can feel like There's a lot of resistance there. However, some of it we're creating ourselves, some of it just doesn't need to be there. And we need to have enough awareness to be able to figure out what that is. So, number one, how I release resistance, I'll journal some of the thoughts so that I can become aware. So when I write down thoughts that I'm having, especially if something is bothering me, I'm writing down those thoughts, and then I look at them and I read them and I say them out loud often, because then I can hear more clearly which one is actually serving me, serving my life, serving the people that I serve, serving the direction I want to go. So if I'm having thoughts like, this is really challenging right now when I'm thinking, seems like a fact to my brain. But when I write it down on paper and I read it out loud, I realize that, oh, that's just a thought, and that's me creating more resistance about something that happened. So what I mean by that is that if I say, this is really challenging right now, and I'm referring to a plumbing breakdown that's happened on the property, this is really challenging right now. To my brain, it seems like a fact, but that thought alone adds more resistance to. To the fact that happened. A plumbing breakdown happened. Because there are hundreds of other thoughts I could have had about the same situation, like, oh, I'm going to find a plumber. The plumber is on their way. I'm positive this will get fixed with ease. It doesn't mean that one thought is more true than another thought, because really, we don't know. When I say, this is really challenging right now, I'm adding my emotional experience to it. And that's something that I can choose to think something differently. So notice that I could have thought something like, oh, I wasn't expecting that. But instead, if I'm thinking, this is challenging right now, I have and I read it out loud and I see it on the paper, I have much greater awareness of what I'm adding to the situation versus what's actually there. And when I read it, I realize, oh, look at me go and add more challenge to this. Because, you know, I like a challenge. So when I become aware of what my brain is doing and what I'm adding to it, then I can lessen the resistance by choosing what to think about it. So that's where journaling comes in to create massive awareness. And really, that's what's happening in coaching a lot of the time, is that there creates an environment of objectivity that isn't there when we're in our own heads. We do not have objectivity in our heads, no matter how much we like to think we do, until we actually step way back or have someone else objectively take a look. That's when we can create more awareness. So number one is journaling. Number two, this can happen during the journaling process, but it's deciphering what I have control over, what I have complete control over, some control over, and zero control over. And I find that for me, I will create resistance and have resistance in the middle of the night. I will think I went to bed with everything being fine. And I will wake up in the night having thoughts about something that I was disappointed with, that I didn't want to have happen, something that's concerning me. And all of it is resistance. All of it. And the thing that helps me go back to sleep oftentimes is recognizing, well, what do I have control over? Right now I have control over allowing myself to go back to sleep. I have control over choosing to tackle this thing tomorrow, have control over contacting someone else, and that's maybe they can influence the situation. So deciphering what I have complete control over, some control over or no control over. And then number three on how I release resistance is deciding where I want my energy to go. And I gave that example of this is the challenging thought when I was journaling. However, when I realized that that thought is creating more challenge, I can decide that where I want that energy to go, if I want my energy to go to disappointment of the situation. Let's say if we use that plumbing example again, I could have my energy go into being disappointed about it, not believing that it happened, finding it such a challenging thing. Or I can have my energy go into contacting three different plumbers, or seeing who's available and when they can come out, or believing that it'll be an easy fix, then I can choose where I want my energy to go. When I'm in a situation where I believe that there are no options, it's a lie. I have complete control over choosing how to focus my energetic state, state my emotional state, my intellectual, intellectual state, I have complete choice over that. So deciding where I want my energy to go becomes so powerful, fretting over a situation does not create anything but a waste of energy and more resistance. Number four, how I release resistance is with a physical release. Now this is so powerful. And you can consider the person who wants to go punch it out on the punching bag or Go for a run. All of that is physical release. And it can be so powerful because anything that we have that's emotional resistance or avoidance behavior, all of that is building up in our body. When we cannot process or expose, express or output the emotional states that we have in our bodies. Because it's a physical frequency, it's a vibration in our bodies. When we cannot release that, it just keeps building up and it comes out in either a very large emotional spot response that we don't want or it can come out in physical tension or headaches or all sorts of things like I mentioned in the somatic example. So a physical release for me will be some sort of physical movement, even, even just a walk, moving my shoulders, walking outside, doing a workout, getting a massage as a physical release, someone else's physical touch. Also another physical release can be verbal expression. So releasing through a verbal expression can be a form of allowing a physical relaxation, getting coached, therapy from someone else, all of these can allow for relaxation and a physical release, breath work can allow for a physical release. Meditation, yoga, all of that, all of that can be a form of a physical release where you notice that when you've done that physical release, it's more relaxing afterwards. Even this is, this can be a sexual release as well. Some of you will notice that you'll feel far more relaxed after and maybe even more emotional present and more emotionally expressive after a sexual release. So all of that can be encompassed in a physical release. And number five and how I release resistance is self compassion. This is something that's been a practice that is really powerful. And it started for me when I was healing two crushed discs in my back and I would literally talk to my body and talk to my body and tell it how amazing it's doing and healing my back and, and how incredible it has been over the years to provide the kind of activity and competition and growth that it's done. And I would talk to my body like it was the most treasured being in the world. And that's when I first started practicing real true self compassion. Now it's the same type of thing. When I gave that example of waking up in the night with a problem that my brain has presented to me in the middle of the night when I would prefer to be sleeping, then that's a moment where I will talk to my brain with self compassion. That's all right. There's nothing we're going to do about that right now. We're just going to go right back to sleep like a 2 year old. I talk to my brain as though it is a cherished being a little two year old and offer that compassion for it, my brain and not being able to sleep in that particular moment. So self compassion goes a really long way and it's something that because many of us have not been taught this, it's something that we forget to do. It's not a practice, it's not a ritual, it's not something that was conditioned in us as kids. So it's something that I find very, very powerful and very impactful. So I hope that all of these. This might feel like a lot for those of us who are new to our own resistances. But I hope that this understanding what hanging on to the resistance does, seeing these signs of resistance and then also having tools that I personally use to release this resistance. I hope this serves you so that you can keep showing up as a magnificent leader that you are, as this human who serves other humans. Because that is what it really is. To be truly empowered, to live in your personal power and to be able to serve other people and empower them. That is being an empowered person. And you are empowered. So I leave you with this last affirmation that I use every single day and it serves me massively. And it is this. I release all resistance. I've said that countless times over the last six months and I've added onto it. I I release all resistance and I invite ease and flow and I can add anything I want to the end. I release all resistance and invite joy and connection. I release all resistance and invite prosperous growth. I release all resistance and invite love and connection. So feel free to borrow any of those affirmations and create your own to keep living an empowered life. Have a great rest of your week everyone. If you enjoy listening to the Empowered Team Podcast, you'll love being on the Empowered Team. 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