Overcome Resistance

Foreign. Welcome to the Meaningful Revolution Podcast. I am your host and certified high performance coach, Sean Butner. And in this episode we are continuing our talk on the purposeful journey. In the last episode, if you didn't listen to it, check it out. We talked about the call to adventure, that call from your heart to have some transformation or change in your life and the decision to then take action towards that vision. And today we're going to talk about the next step. So after you heed that call from your soul to change, to transform, to put out a more authentic version of yourself and, and put your goodness out into the world, there comes this concept called resistance. And in the book the War of Art, it comes in all different forms. It talks a lot about resistance in that book, but it could come from self doubt. Maybe you want to start that business, but you're not sure if you're going to make it as a business person or you have the skills to run a business, even though you're really good at your craft. It could be selfishness, right? You don't want to change, you don't want to put your good out in the world. You have a good thing going on. And so you opt for something that's more comfortable because it's more satisfying to you right in this moment. It could be fear and anxiety of what happens if you don't make it, how will you be judged, or what happens if you do make it and then you have to figure out what's next. Those are both equally scary and could cause anxiety. It's frustration of you've been on the journey for so long and sweating and toiling and striving and you haven't had the results that you wanted yet. You're not getting the progress quick enough. And so the frustration is there. Or you're impatient because it should have happened by now, or you have some set of unmet expectations. There's this sour momentum, where I call it sour momentum. It's momentum for things that you don't want in your life. So when you get home, you want to work out, but the momentum you have is what the thing you've been doing for the last two years, which is you come home, flip on the tv, open a bag of chips and chill out, right? So how do you change that momentum? You have exhaustion right along with frustration. If you've been going 150%, 100% of the time, that's not sustainable and you're just tired because you've been striving for so long, for so hard without Any meaningful breaks without any meaningful light, right. And sometimes we call this the murky middle and we can get into that or we have a lack of vision, we don't see the steps we need to accomplish to achieve our great ambitions and great dreams. And any one of these has been me in my life, it's been in evident in my clients lives. It's a very human thing to experience resistance in one or more of these forms that I just talked about. And what separates people that have that, that, that connection and are seriously heeding their call to adventure and are serious about making the decision and taking decisive action towards meeting it, is they find their way around these resistance instance, right? And it sounds very flippant to say that they just find their way around it. But there are methods that we can implement in our lives to help us move forward, right? And we could just be seeing a coach and figuring out what your fears really are and really putting a name to it and really understanding it and then creating a plan to mitigate those. It could be something about just realizing and acknowledging how far you've come so far, the progress you've made and that if you continue that trajectory of incremental progress over time, eventually you will succeed, you'll lean in to your purpose maybe, or sometimes consistency and just showing up with discipline on time, ready to work and whatever happens, that's the best way to move through these types of resistances. But I have five of these different tactics for you that I'll share with you in more detail. But at the end of the day, resistance is a personal thing that we all encounter. And resistance is the thing that prevents us from taking the next step or taking the actions that we need to in order to really turn the dialogue on our ambitions in lives to get that much closer, that much quicker. Right. And again, like as a coach, I deal with this all the time. And if you identified with any of those different types of resistance, just know I'm cheering you on, right? If there's anyone on the planet that's cheering you on, at least it's me. If not, I'm sure you have other people in your social circle that, that are supporting you. And I hope that's true. But if that's not the case, I got your back. I have seen so many people who have been striving for so long, for so hard, finally just through tenacity, through sticking with it, through sometimes taking a break so they can rest and rejuvenate and regroup. The people that don't quit, that don't give up are the ones that can overcome this resistance. But we can be a little more strategic, a little bit more strategic also. And so here are five ways you can meet and overcome resistance on your meaningful journey towards whatever is great, whatever ambitions you have in your life. That first one is to slay your fear dragon. And that in itself could be a whole we're using a story structure here for describing the purposeful journey. Slaying your fear dragon could be a whole journey on itself. We talked a lot about this with Patricia Tallman and earlier podcasts. I'll link that below in the show notes here. But slaying your fear dragon is confronting what scares you, Rhett. And nine times out of 10, the thing that scares you one isn't as scary as you think it is and two will actually be the point where you grow the most. For me personally, I was shy growing up, still am shy. I like podcasts, I like interviews, I like coaching one on one, because that's where I feel the most comfortable. And big groups, I get quiet and I do the whole introverted thing. And that's me, just how I manage my energy and all that. So when I had the opportunity in high school to say or I had a friend invite me to do something called coffee club, where after school one day they're having like a talent show type thing, low key people doing poetry and performances. And I was asked to do some music because I loved music. I absolutely love music. And I was learning how to play guitar. I could play a Weezer song, I think I was sharing that with my friend who invited me to do this shout out to Sarah and she asked me like, hey, would you perform? And I had my heart stop for a second because the thought of getting up in front of a room of peers and parents and stuff terrified me. And I also knew at that time I was a senior in high school, that I would eventually have to make friends because I was leaving my core group of friends. I was the only one that didn't go to the same college as they they did. So, you know, went to Purdue. I was going to Purdue and was really the only person that I knew. A couple people from my high school I just wasn't close with, but going to Purdue was going to be by myself. I needed to make friends. I needed to push myself and show that in a really weird way that getting up in front of people or saying hi to people or getting up in front of strangers wasn't a big deal. And I knew this intellectually, but my Whole body was in that flight mode. Don't do this as a terrible idea. You're going to embarrass yourself. You're going to fail. What are you even thinking about doing this? You haven't played guitar for longer than three months with lessons you can't carry a frickin tune and now you want to try to play guitar and sing at the same time? It's nuts. And but I made myself do it. And I made myself do it because this, this was a point in my life where I'm like, if I can do this, meeting people in a strange place where I'm not known is going to be easier, right? And so I was able to do and I performed 15 minutes. I found out that the crowd cheered me on. And I also found out that fear of I was going to die wasn't true. Literally wasn't true. I was, I'm still here, I'm talking to you right now. That I am still living proof that getting up in front of people to play music and completely like biff it guys. Like it was not a great performance, but it was my performance and I did it and I'm still here. And that helped me break out of my shell enough to not be a complete hermit in my college years. What do we know about slaying your field dragon? Right. From the high performance coach work that I do, there are three different types of fear. And once you know the type of fear you're dealing with, it's much easier to address it and overcome. Right? And I do this all the time in my, with my coaching clients. So if you are meeting resistance in your life and you're like, what do I do to get back into action, to get back into momentum, to get moving forward on those big ambitions, those big dreams, those big goals that I have in my life. There's a free strategy session you can sign up for below in the show notes here. Seanbadren.com coaching of course, it's a one hour strategy session. We give you high performance habits, we talk about your life and build a customized plan for you to go out and crush it. And if at the end of that you want to continue with a coaching relationship, we talk about that. If not, we have delivered you in an hour a world class plan with world class strategies to get you going out in the world. And so I'd love to offer that to you. But three different types of fears that we would do in a coaching call, not necessarily that strategy call are there is loss, fear, right? The act of starting on your meaningful journey, heeding that call to adventure, that call from your heart, you might lose something in your life. You might lose some short term comfort. Taking on any new endeavor could be risky. And there's a lot of things you have to figure out. And it puts, puts people out into territory where they feel a little bit insecure. So maybe you're going to lose the certainty of knowing what you're doing every day. Or when you start that new diet, you're going to have to give up eating pizza and cookies, because you love pizza and cookies, because you need to feel your body different. And if you want to perform at the highest level when you race, that's going to be vegetables and protein and all fresh type stuff, right? So you're losing something you like in doing the thing that you're doing. The second type of fear is outcome fear, right? This is if I train for the marathon and I cross that line after 26.2 miles, I am not going to feel accomplished about it. Like, why am I even doing this? Like the grass is always greener on the other side type thing. And it's important to know that this is a belief that your life isn't going to change for the better by doing the thing. And the third type of fear before we go into addressing how to overcome these types of things is process fear. Meaning the act of change is going to be so painful, you're going to give up, right? So when I sign up for a marathon, the act of running every day for the next nine weeks or nine months preparing for the marathon is going to be painful. I'm going to hate it. I'm going to be antisocial. The list goes on and on. And you can't. The perceived pain of doing the thing prevents you from starting, right? And so there's loss fear, process fear and outcome fear. So how do you overcome each of these? And very simply and very succinctly, it's focusing on what you gain through doing the thing, right? So from taking action and starting that business, you will gain financial abundance, potentially, you will gain prestige in your field, potentially, you will gain potentially a greater impact and positive influence out in the world. Or you've helped people dealing with this very specific problem live an easier, happier life. And so understanding what you gain from going on your first purposeful journey is highly important. Even if it's just I will have a happier, higher quality of life, that's totally valid. But focusing on what you gain and then focusing on the cost of an action, right? And so what do you have to lose is the other side of that. If I train for a marathon and I don't feel super accomplished at the end of it, I'm going to get into fantastic health by running every day for the next nine months, Right? Or if I start that business and it fails, I will learn how to form a company. I'll learn how to do run a business. And it might not serve me in that particular function, but that's experience I have for the next job or the work that I've built here will help me get that next gig if I need it. And so we could start to mitigate those fears by thinking about, like, how what are you going to learn? What are you going to put out in the world and what's the potential upside, Right? Because you will miss 100% of the shots you do not take. And so sometimes you have to swing. Sometimes there's a little bit of faith involved in taking that bet on yourself and saying, I can do this. And I highly recommend that you take more shots on yourself or not on yourself, but for yourself than you think you feel, than you currently are. Right? Because eventually you'll have to hit a home run. And the chance of hitting a home run is much. And having an interesting, fantastic life is the potential for some temporary discomfort. Anyways, slay your fear dragons. And again, you can check out that episode with Patricia Tallman. We talk about that in our in an hour, in depth. Pretty amazing. A second thing to realize is why we're not taking action is sometimes you're in the murky middle of the project, of the journey, of the thing. What is the murky middle? This is another podcast that I talked about with Dara Brady a bunch. In any creative project or project, in my experience, there comes a point in the middle where you're over the initial success of starting something and learning and you're in the doing of it. And inevitably you'll have the question, what am I doing? Like, how is this going to ever finish? This continues to keep going and ultimately that's a sign. I've felt this before and Dara shared it in her episode of the Meaningful Revolution Solution that you're about to do something interesting, something's going to fall into place and you'll get to the back half of the project really enthusiastic. But you're about to do something different, something new, something unique, and knowing that can help you persevere through that murky middle part, right? Or again, it's realizing that your effort will be fruitful if you continue On. So it's important to recognize that murky middle. Third thing to think about is to lean into your purpose and why. You know, we talk about this a whole bunch on this podcast. I have a bunch of exciting guests coming up for you guys, where we're going to get into why they love their particular topics. So I'm working on editing those right now. I'm really excited. So got some really great conversations coming for you. But leaning into that purpose and why sometimes. I had a client who wanted to get into better health and had done some amazing things. He'd run marathons before he'd had been and. And had also lost that shape and had fallen out of it and really wanted to model healthy habits for his children. Right. He's. I've always struggled with weight. It's on, it's off. And if I just would've started with a more solid base, I wouldn't have had those struggles. And so his why for working out and not jumping on the couch and just chilling out right after work is to role model that behavior for his kids. And that's so important. And a lot of times, if you feel stuck, if you're like, I'm not taking actions towards this thing that I want, that I've committed to, and it's just not happening. It's asking yourself this question, who in your life needs you to succeed here? Who in your life is looking at what you're doing right now and needs a role model on how to do this? And that benefit extension is super important and can make all the difference in taking action or not. Again, who in your life do you need a role model for in this particular part of your journey to inspire them to do the same, to inspire them to take a chance on themselves, to inspire themselves to do something great with their life. Because so often we get so focused on ourselves, we forget who's looking. And I think that very simple idea has very profound impacts in society today. And we need to fight against that, I think, personally. But it can get. You can get your butt into gear. So lean into your purpose and why and think about your purpose and why in relation to the people around you. All right. Fourth thing for overcoming resistance. Sometimes it's just consistency and discipline. Right. If you're trying to start a new health program. Right. Say again. We'll go back to running. Right? I hated running. I signed up for the Chicago Marathon in 2010, and I went from not being able to run for 15 minutes to finishing that race without dying. And how did I do that? Right. It was. I had a plan. I bought a book from Hal Higdon, Let me screw up his name. The book is called how to Train, and it's for beginner marathoners. And it just has the mileage each week. Have to run for 20 weeks. I think something like that, set amount of weeks slowly incrementing with breaks, and it's all figured out for you. You just have to go and run the miles, and it's great. And the reason I was able to get from unable to run 15 minutes in a row to running 26.2 miles is I showed up four days a week to work that plan, right? So it's, oh, I have to run three miles today, figure out three miles and do my best. And did I always completely run from start to finish those three miles or four miles or whatever it was? No. But I showed up and each time I was able to run a little bit further or I was able to accomplish and have a street where I would run the mileage for that week all in a row, which is great. And that consistency of showing up for those four days that were planned and the discipline of putting on my running clothes, putting on my running shoes and figuring out the route and then going to where the route started sometimes, that was my goal, is to just get to the start of the planned run and see what happens. And 10 times outta 10, when I got there and, like, went through all the effort to put on the clothes, to figure out how to get water and figure out the route and all that stuff that you start, and I'm like, maybe I'll just do a minute today. And then it just naturally, once you get a little bit of momentum on the right things, it all changes. And where in your life, on your purposeful journey, do you need a little bit more consistency and discipline? And that is. Is it on your calendar? And it is. What is the minimum thing you need to do to show up? And I know some people cringe when they're like, no, you have to have these big, huge strides of effort and you gotta crush it all the time. And I am not the person that's saying you need to do that, because my belief is if you show up ready, you will start. And if you start, you will gradually start pushing yourself. Because I think people generally will get bored after a while if you're continually doing the minimum. You're like, I can do a little bit more. And every time I've seen this out in the wild, people rise up and will push themselves if they're Consistent and disciplined. So that's the first thing. Get it on your calendar, show up every time, do get the minimum setup required to get started and see what happens. And I think that will take you pretty far. All right. The fifth thing to do in order to overcome resistance is to lean in on your friends, right? Sometimes a relationship like a coach or mentor or family member or whoever you really trust can help motivate you. If you're experiencing self doubt or you have some of that sour motivation where you have momentum in the wrong thing, sour momentum. A friend or a mentor or a coach can point that out for you and be like, hey, you're more capable than you can I believe in you? Or hey, like you said, you really want this. What is your son going to say when he sees you not working out in that particular thing? And I think the social dynamic, especially coming from an introvert, is often underrated and can have huge impacts. Right? Getting around people that are on the same path and journey, people that are chasing their purpose and putting their good out in the world can be in itself just being around those people, highly motivating. And your social groups, do you need to make new friends that are doing the things that you're doing? Do you need to talk with people you trust? There's so many different threads. You could go down there. Do you need to hire a coach or attend a strategy session? And I'll shamelessly plug that again. So hit the link below if you need a little bit of help there. Having people, again, going back to that role model question, it is leaning on the people around you to help motivate you to take that next best action. Because ultimately all of these strategies we talked about slaying your fear dragon, recognizing the murky middle, leaning into your purpose and why consistency and discipline and leaning on your friends are just five different strategies to help you take the next best action. Whether that's a small or big thing, a big bold statement or action or not doesn't matter. It's did you do anything at all? Because the. To combat resistance, you need momentum, right? You need to have enough speed running at that wall to break through it. And sometimes it starts with that first step or that first little bit of acceleration. With that, my friends, break through your resistance, Continue on your meaningful journey. We are here from you. We're cheering you on here at the Meaningful Revolution podcast. We will talk about the next parts of the journey which are just learning, standing on your own and success. So what happens when you break through? And then we'll go from there. And I am very grateful that you guys are here and excited for this next episode of the Meaningful Revolution podcast. This is Sean Butter saying, go out with more joy, growth and impact in your communities. We'll see you then. In everyone's journey to find meaning, there's usually one moment where they make a decision to act. It's that point when you encounter a poor product or a piece of music or something else in your life that you love and you decide that you can do it better and you go about creating better. It's that point in your life when you look around and wonder, how did I get here? How life gets so boring or stressful or just not how you imagined. And so you decide it's time to figure out how to change that. Or it's that feeling that you could be working on something that's more fulfilling, more in service to others and more exciting. And so you decide it's time to figure out how to have more of that in your life. And in each of these scenarios, there's this call to adventure, a call from your heart to change, and the decision to act. So I'm Shawn Butner and I help people heed their call from their hearts to change. As a certified High Performance coach, I guide people through a science based process to help them live their life more aligned to their aspirations and dreams. And maybe that's you. And if it is, maybe your time is now to work with the coach to help you follow your call to adventure. So if so, you can apply for a free one hour strategy session with me at www.seanbutner.com coaching or check the link below in the comments. If in there we will spend one hour building your high performance plan. We'll talk about what your call to adventure is. That decision that you've made or want to make and then the plan to make it happen and realize it. And so I've helped people start businesses. I've helped people change careers. I've helped people change how they feel about their lives through this process called high performance coaching. I know it can help you. I'd love to coaching. I love the people that I'm able to serve with it and I hope that's you. So check that link below wherever you're listening to or watching this episode of the Meaningful Revolution podcast. Enjoy the rest of the episode. Sa.