Mental Health and Combatting “Resistance”
Your mental health should not be neglected
Where do you find the good in yourself?
The good in yourself is abundant. And that’s a reflection of the truth that you and I live in an abundant Universe. There is more than enough good to go around. Everyone deserves care, kindness, compassion, empathy, and love. Your true desire is along that line.
Mental health (emotional health and spiritual health, too) gets insufficient attention. But self-awareness depends on your knowledge of your health, wellness, and wellbeing.
And only you can recognize how that looks.
What is resistance?
To quote Pressfield directly,
“Resistance will tell you anything to keep you from doing your work. … If you take Resistance at its word, you deserve everything you get. Resistance is always lying and always full of shit.”
Resistance is a force that stands against your work to be your best self. It frequently manifests as procrastination, excuses, indecision, and anything and everything that keeps you from doing your work.
Resistance and mental health
Resistance is a product of the ego. The ego, as I envision it, is a construct between your subconscious and conscious self that you project to the world at large - but also reflect back to yourself.
From The War of Art,
“Our job in this life is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it.”
To be who you are requires fighting Resistance. You’ve done it before – even if you didn’t call it this. As such – you can do it again.
This battle will bring up issues of self-awareness that directly impact your mental, emotional, and spiritual health, wellness, and wellbeing.
Fear again
Fear is often the most impactful isness on our conscious awareness. Yet it’s largely intangible.
One of the most recognizable elements of Resistance is fear.
Again, from The War of Art,
“Resistance is experienced as fear; the degree of fear equates to the strength of Resistance.”
“Fear doesn’t go away. The warrior and the artist live by the same code of necessity, which dictates that the battle must be fought anew every day.”
Do you recognize Resistance and how combatting it empowers you?
This week’s Applied Guidance for Mindfulness Tool:
Today we’re going to take something you need or desire to do and chunk it down as part of combatting Resistance.
Even if you don’t have something of this nature in front of you now, you can use this tool going forward.
Let’s put this into step.
1. Identify the thing you need and/or desire to do
2. What are its constituent parts?
3. What needs to be done immediately, what can be delayed, and what can be put off?
4. Set times to accomplish the individual elements
5. Do the work
Chunking anything down that you face – even small things – can empower you to get them done with less resistance. By doing this, you beat Resistance – and that goes a long, long way towards improving your overall health – mental, emotional, spiritual, and even physical.
Blogs: titaniumdon.com and mjblehart.medium.com
Original cover art artist Fe Mahoney: https://www.etsy.com/shop/TaliasInspirations