My friend Jen and I send each other messages over Voxer pretty much daily. We’re small business owners and self-proclaimed nerds trying to figure out the world of entrepreneurship. We share war stories, successes, and do our best to hold each other accountable. We also share GIFs, ridiculous moments, and an intense love of the show Stranger Things.
And, we have each other’s seventh-grade picture as our contact photo because it’s hilarious and a great reminder to not take ourselves too seriously.
A frequent topic of our conversations is our resistance to a particular task or tasks we need to get done.
It sounds like this…
“Jen, I don’t know why I’m feeling resistance to getting my outline done.”
or
“Alex, I’m feeling some resistance around writing the objectives for my course.”
Let’s get super real here for a second; resistance is just a fancy way of saying procrastinating.
Dang it.
Come on, doesn’t resistance just sound nicer?
I mean, the word procrastination carries with it all sorts of negative vibes, and we can’t have that, can we?
But here’s the problem; resistance gives the illusion that there’s a mysterious universal force creating tension within me and this universal force might be warning me that the thing I’m supposed to be doing might be;
a.) not in alignment with my master plan
b.) dangerous
c.) the wrong move
Oh, come on.
Let’s go through these resistance warnings here;
a.) Alignment.
Really? With yourself? What the heck does alignment even mean when you’re talking about yourself? Don’t go using fancy terms against yourself. If whatever you’re putting off needs to be done, then alignment with yourself is irrelevant. And who the heck is ever 100% aligned with themselves? Alignment is for cars, not people.
b.) Dangerous.
Really? Are you a Navy Seal, a police officer, a high-rise crane operator? No. No, you’re not. The most dangerous parts of your day are your drive to and from work, and possibly when the coffee maker runs out. Get over yourself.
c.) The wrong move. Ok, I’ll give you a moment of grace on this one. You don’t want to make any mistakes, but you’re going to makes anyway, at some point, so you might as well get super cozy with the idea and get to it already. The only way you make fewer mistakes is through practice and repetition, neither of which you’ll get if you sit around thinking about your “resistance” to the task at hand.
So, saying I feel “resistance” is just a fancy way of saying “I’m procrastinating,” and it makes us feel better about ourselves because it sounds more entrepreneurial.
My friend, if you’re like us, and you catch yourself trying to put lipstick on the pig of procrastination by calling it something other than it is…
Stop.
Go get your work done.