In a warm and fuzzy moment, you agree to cat sit for your neighbors while they spend the week in San Juan. Now, you hate yourself for saying yes. Maybe you promised to take your mother shopping this weekend, but you forgot the tournament would be televised, and you don’t want to miss a moment of the action. Did you raise your hand when your supervisor asked for volunteers to cover for a colleague going out on maternity leave, and now, you’re beating yourself up for it? Or maybe the thought of getting out of your uber-comfy memory foam bed is much more enticing than keeping your promise to yourself to go for that morning run.
There is not a soul alive who, at one time or another, will regret having agreed to doing something, and later wish they hadn’t. Maybe you agreed to help with those never-ending chores around the house. Maybe you offered to help someone move. Maybe you volunteered for a charity event. There are millions of scenarios, but the outcome is still the same. You have changed your mind, and you want out.
Next comes the conversation. The internal dialogue. The great debate. The wrestling matches. Keep the commitment. Ditch the commitment. What will you choose?
All this backing and forthing is resistance. In this context, resistance is the place between doing and not doing. Between moving forward and retreating.
Author Dan Millman explains what happens to us when we succumb to resistance. “Stress happens when your mind resists what is… The only problem in your life is your mind’s resistance to life as it unfolds.”
I find that this is the worst part of the decision-making process. Resistance devours time in monumental increments, because while dithering back and forward, time passes, and you end up with nothing to show for it. And the worst thing about time passing? You can get it back. You cannot push the resent button. You cannot buy more. Those minutes are gone forever. No matter your eventual decision, you’ve still lost – you’ve lost time.
And Steven Pressfield, in his book the War of Art: Winning the Inner Creative Battle, cements this idea of loss with this quote:
“Resistance by definition is self-sabotage.”
When we notice that we are “in resistance” we have three choices. We can honor our original commitment, we can choose to walk away from it, or we can choose to contemplate and waste a lot of un-recoupable time, and in the end do either. Number one is probably the best choice. You keep your honor and save face. More than likely, you will feel better for keeping your word. You will also reap the psychological benefits of doing something good for someone else. Number two is also an excellent choice if you are willing to accept whatever consequences arise. Choice number three – in my humble opinion – is the worst choice. Because no matter what your eventual decision, you will have robbed yourself of time.
There is one more thing. In my own life, I have often found myself resisting because I’ve created this story in my mind of how long the thing I’ve agreed to do is going to take, or how hard it’s going to be, or how much work I’ll have to do. I have psyched myself into expecting a negative result, which generated a lot of resistance. That mental exercise is nothing more than wasted energy. The things that I have spent time resisting haven’t been nearly as awful as I told myself they would be.
So, let’s all cut the self-sabotage, and stop wasting time and energy. Let’s not tell ourselves disempowering stories. Let us love ourselves enough to avoid that loop of resistance. If you must, give yourself time to think about honoring a commitment BEFORE agreeing to it and later regretting that you said yes.
I’ll leave you with a quote from speaker, author, and scientist Steve Maraboli:
“I feel keeping a promise to yourself is a direct reflection of the love you have for yourself. I used to make promises to myself and find them easy to break. Today, I love myself enough to not only make a promise to myself, but I love myself enough to keep that promise.”
until next time…
