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Google PodcastsAre you on the struggle bus when it comes to sitting down, focusing and then getting stuff done? I’ve ridden that bus for years and I’ve had to fight really hard to get through that. The resistance has been made worse because I’ve chosen the arts as a career goal. Instead of wanting to go after a college degree – I have wanted a very different path for my life. That comes with a societal pressure and predisposition to everyone saying you should have a back up plan. It has a built in sense of resistance. I’m here to tell you that you can fight against all of that and still do what you want to do. I’m going to give you actionable steps to make that happen in this episode.
Sometimes we are just afraid to take the chance and to do something we are good at simply because it’s a risk or it’s got a built in amount of resistance. Choosing a career in the arts tends to have that built in resistance. Me personally, I’ve been afraid to be bad at something I love. I’ve been so afraid that I’ve stoped myself from even trying. However, that’s not the reason to NOT do something. That’s just resistance fighting back and stopping me from doing what I truly want to do.
Downloadables & Mentions in this Episode
Fighting Resistance Worksheet: Click Here to Download the Fighting Resistance PDF
Book Recommendations:
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Episode Transcript
Hi, I’m Nicole, everyone kept telling me that my unique life experiences and messages of hope, would make a great podcast. So I made one. Join me as I journey through life’s many obstacles on girl versus world. Hello, everybody, welcome back to girl versus world. It’s great to have you. It’s great to be here. If you’re just joining us for the very first time, my name is Nicole. And I started out with a blog about two years ago called Girl vs world.com. That’s vs spelled out not vs. And you could go on there and you can read kind of like my journey, my life journey for the last two years. And I dip back and forth between my past and things I’m doing now and kind of things that have happened in my life that either I’m recovering from or trying to learn lessons from and become a better person in the process.
And so I started the podcast to kind of grow from there. You know, I realize in today’s world that reading things, like especially a blog, or a book, or you know, a PDF document, not everybody likes to read things. And so my goal here is to bring some of what I did in that blog and bringing it to an audio format. So a podcast seemed to make sense to me. So here I am making podcasts and trying to put content out there for the people that like to listen to content. Over sitting down and reading, I personally struggle with sitting down and like reading a book. And so like, for me, doing a podcast is easier. Like I don’t write a format for my podcast, I literally get a topic, I sit down and I just start recording, I don’t edit these, I don’t cut things out, whatever I say is what gets said. And that’s the end of it. Like my videos as well. I am also on YouTube.
So if you would prefer to watch and listen, you can do that. I’m going to be posting these on YouTube. So just check out Girl versus world on YouTube. And you can see this mug and a lot of of hand movements and facial expressions because that’s the kind of person I am I’m very much like a, you can read my emotion on my face, and my hands will tell you the rest. So feel free to check out the YouTube channel. And that way, if you get bored with just listening, you can watch too. I mean, I can’t guarantee a full show, but you can at least see some inflection. I’m also going to show stuff on camera today. So this is particularly an episode that you might want to check out on YouTube. Yeah, okay. So to my point about, like sitting down and reading, I realized that is not the format for everybody. So I’m trying to grow this into, you know, giving, giving people options. Um, I personally have a struggle with sitting down and reading books.
So I joined a business book club with some really awesome ladies that I’ve been fortunate to get to know. And we started reading books together. And it’s like, going back to school days where you were assigned homework, like if I’m assigned homework, and I’m committed to the book club, I will read the book, because I don’t want to be the person that’s not prepared. And that goes back to like, school days where I was the kid that was like, always prepared. I always did my homework, I had straight A’s. If I miss something, I was devastated. And like, I was the kid that like already had the a and did the extra credit work. Like it, I had to just be like, top of class. And that’s like, I don’t know, it’s just a personality trait of mine. And I know this about myself. So if I go ahead and commit myself to something like a book club, I’ll actually read so it’s been a goal of mine to read.
Alright, so we started with this book. If you’re watching on YouTube, you can see it I’m holding it up, but it is called the four hour workweek and it’s by Timothy Ferris, and it is a very large book. Like, this thing is heavy. It’s got a huge index in the back like bonus material reference material. Um, And getting this book, I knew I knew the idea it was selling, right? Like I knew that it was selling this idea of having a four hour workweek, which is great. That sounds freakin fantastic. Because primarily for me, I work my 40 hours a week. And then I work my passion projects like my blog, and the podcast. And then I have like, acting gigs, and singing gigs and performances and all this other stuff. In addition to trying to have like, a normal social life, the four hour workweek sounds impossible to me. But I was optimistic.
I’m like, Okay, well read this book, and we’ll see how it goes. It was not for me. And let me say Why? Because it’s setting up a business that doesn’t feed my soul. And for me to work on something, I have to be connected to it. And what they were outlining kind of in here is a lot of stuff that I I’ve done in businesses, like I’ve done affiliate marketing, I’ve done, I’ve worked for agencies, I’ve done a lot of marketing stuff, my bread and butter is marketing automation. So like I help people take their courses and put them online. And, you know, get out this information like, you know, I have to feel like a connection to what I’m doing, or I just don’t want to do it. These days, like the older I get, the more selfish I get on the projects that I participate in, because of how time consuming they can be. I want them to like nurture parts of my soul.
And I think if there’s portions of this book that I can use, like there’s actionable items in here, particularly with delegating, I struggle to delegate. Now, I don’t know if you have this problem as well. But like, I don’t trust people to get it done the way that I do it. And that comes again, from like the perfectionism of when I was a kid and I wanted everything to be perfect. And like group assignments, were a nightmare to me to be paired with other people who weren’t going to do as good of a job as I could do was like, like a dagger through the chest. And it’s not to say that I’m like this perfect person who actually gets stuff done even efficiently. But in my own head, I’m like, I would just rather do it myself, because then I know it’ll be done right? And then I don’t have to like, answer a bunch of questions and deal with it. But that is not how to efficiently run your own business.
And that’s certainly not going to get me away from working like 50 or 60 hours a week, because at some point, I can’t do it. All right. And that’s a hard thing to admit when you have an ego. And you’ve done things a certain way for so long. But it comes down to this idea of like, resistance, being resistance to change being resistant to allowing, you know, things to just happen, like, I’m very controlling in a lot of aspects of my life, because I had my control taken from me for so many years. And this happens when you’re like, you know, you have a rough childhood or you get into a relationship or that person controls everything that you do like the thing that happens when you get out of that and you start to heal from that as you you overcorrect. And what I’ve done is I’ve overcorrected. And now I want to control everything, which is also not good.
So having no control and trying to control everything, both not great things to do. And so where I’m going with that is I want to talk about a book that I just started reading. And it was recommended to me by a boss of mine, because I’m a writer, and because I pursue the arts a lot. It can be hard to put all of your focus into those things because, you know, I don’t know about you guys, but like, or girls, guys, girls, however you identify, I should get out of saying that I have to admit that I am terrible about gendering people. And I’m really trying to work on it. So my apologies are saying guys, I’m trying to get out of doing that and correcting when I do that, so I just caught it. I apologize when you folks I tried to use folks I don’t know if that is offensive, but I go with folks, people humans, and that seems to be better.
I want to just say that I am a Southern California girl and I call everyone guys are dude and it’s not actually Double. So anyway, back to what I was talking about. Um, yeah, so I’m a writer, and I often, you know, when we grow up, we’re kind of like pushed into certain professions, like be a doctor or be a lawyer or a police officer or a teacher, like, there’s very specific paths, when you’re the kid that says that you want to be an actor, or you’re the kid that says they want to be a musician, or a director, or all these other things like, there tends to be a certain attitude about it, where it’s like, Hmm, maybe you should have a backup plan. In case you don’t make it, it’s like, you’re almost put at a disadvantage, almost immediately, because you’ve chosen the arts.
I’m not that my parents didn’t like support the fact that like, I was artistic. But it definitely came with a set of like, maybe you should have a backup plan, make sure to study get good grades. And in all of that, you know, and I think we’ve seen that perpetuated in media and in the TV that we watch, that the kids that pick the creative careers. There’s either something like, kind of off about them, or they’re, like, treated differently than someone who is saying they want to be a doctor or a teacher or something like that. We’re like, yes, do that. But if you’re doing arts, like you’re supposed to do your art, and then something else, like we’re supposed to have multiple jobs. And maybe that’s because when we do come out to LA, or wherever we’re going to pursue our arts, that we’re usually working multiple jobs.
That’s how it was, when I came out to LA, I was a waitress, doing auditions and getting gigs and trying to, like, navigate that world, right? So, um, I say that because when you choose a job in the arts, and you choose a passion in the arts, there’s a lot of resistance built into just that choice. And so this book was recommended to me based on like, a feelings I have about my own writing and my own pursuits. Because again, I have a day job 40 hours a week, I’m doing marketing automation, for one company that does life coaching. And then I work for another marketing company where I help people get their stuff online, right.
So it’s creative, and in a certain respect with very, a very technical type of job. And that’s my, that’s my day job. That’s my, my moneymaker. Um, and then I have these other pursuits, right? So we were talking about these other pursuits, and my boss was like, you should get this book. Because the great thing about her is that she, she pushes us to pursue that are our passions to you know, she’s like, you got to keep writing and keep doing, keep following your heart and work with us. And we’ll work with you. And like, it’s a very great environment to be a part of, and I feel very encouraged. So this book feels personal because of that aspect. But also, I started reading it, and I’m like, Oh, my gosh, this makes so much sense.
So the book is called the War of Art break through the blocks, and when your inner creative battles. So this is the book right here. If you’re if you’re just tuning in on the podcast, and listening audio, I will put a link to this on the blog, I will also put a link to this on YouTube, if you want to check it out, and you want to purchase it. The book is by Steven pressfield. And I started reading it. And like right away, I’m just going to read directly from a highlighted piece. And the title of this particular part of the book says what I know is that there’s a secret that real writers know that want that want to be writers don’t. And the secret is this. It’s not the writing part, that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write. And what keeps us from sitting down is resistance.
Okay, if you’re a writer, then you know exactly what he’s talking about here where it’s like the it’s not the writing That’s hard. You can do the writing, you know you’re capable of it. You’ve taken courses, you know, you’re confident in your ability to write, but you fight so hard with everything in your being not to sit down and do it. And that’s a crazy thing to think about. Because we sit we do a lot of things in our life that we feel forced to do, and we do them like second nature. But when it comes to pursuing the thing, we really, really want to do Like, if you’re a writer, you find so many excuses not to sit down and write.
And that’s resistance. Right? There’s a resistance. And I feel like, already, we had resistance built into us by society by our parents, because we chose professions and dreams. And that’s the thing too, right? People call, wanting to be an actor a dream. And like wanting to be a teacher, they don’t call that a dream. They call that a job or a profession or career. So even the way that we term things, it’s like, oh, you’re following your dreams. Like, it’s great that they call it a dream, that sounds positive, but it’s a dream. Like, people don’t look at it as like a profession, unless you’re successful in it. So if you, you know, if your face ends up on TV, or you get a recurring role, then it’s a profession, right? Like you’re an actor, and you’re a professional actor. And that’s a that’s a career. But when you’re out here, struggling, you know, barely eating and like trying to make it happen. Like, it’s just a dream you’re following.
And people always say they’re like, well, at some point, you got to you got to live your life and stop following your dreams. And you’re just like, wow, you think if you take a step back from that, and you think about it, it’s really kind of crappy to think of it that way. So there’s the resistance built in, right? You have people around you putting resistance on you, and you have this resistance that you’re putting on yourself, right? So I’ve started highlighting a lot of stuff in this book, because it is, it is just speaking to my soul. Like, there’s this one part that says resistance is the most toxic force on the planet. Ain’t that the truth? Like we can, we can find so many excuses as to why we shouldn’t do something like if I decide, okay, because I’m working on a book, personally, I have the hardest time sitting down and actually starting it, I will sit down all day, and I will do my job. And I will work.
And I have no problem doing that. I will sit down and, and have a conversation with somebody. But like when it comes to writing, I have so much resistance that’s like pushing against me, right? But it’s getting better like acknowledging that this resistance like exists, I’m getting to a point where I can start to push back against that resistance where it’s like, you don’t have time to write today, because you’re not making money with this writing right now. Okay, but I haven’t made money with my writing for two years. And I’ve still continued to write in the blog. And in this podcast, I will still continue to record these podcasts. Because often times we equate if something is successful is if we’re making money at it. Or if we have so many followers on our social media, or we have so many downloads or listens.
And we’re tying it all to this thing. But the success of what we’re doing is actually sitting down and doing it is fighting the resistance is the success. So if you’re in a position right now, where you’re not making money with the things that you really want to do in your life, right, like you have your day job, and you’re doing these extra things. And you’re like, I’m just not, I’m not successful, if you are doing them and you are making the time to do them. That is success. Don’t ever let anybody tell you that you’re not successful, because it isn’t making you money. Because you a lot of these passions that we have and that we do. It’s not about the money. Sometimes we are rewarded with money. But that’s not why we do them. But the fact that we can sit down and do them and put it out there.
That’s such a huge success. And I think it’s underrated and people don’t say it enough, where they’re like, you should just stop doing that because it’s not making you money, and it’s taking up your time and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it’s all of this resistance around you that’s trying to get you to stop. So even if you’ve defeated the resistance in yourself, there is there are outside forces that will also put their resistance on you. This can come in the form of a partner, like your partner saying you’re just never spending time with me or This doesn’t make us money and you need to focus on other things or you know, there could be all these resistance from that or family. Like having a family that doesn’t understand your passions and the things that you want to do and how you live your life.
Like there’s a lot of resistance that can come from that. And I was listening to someone speak Earlier today, her name is teal swan. And she was saying that a lot of this stuff that happens in our life, this like resistance that we can start to feel is like a train that’s been going for generations. And sometimes we are the stopping force. Like the stuff that my mother that my grandmother and her mother suffered with skin stop with me by just simply turning around and being like, enough is enough. You know, like, maybe I’m not the first to be creative, and to pursue my passions and acting and singing.
But maybe I’m the first one in my life, because everybody else just jumped on that train, and decided that their dreams didn’t matter or decided that they didn’t want to go after other things, because life got in the way, right. But I can be the first one. But I’m going to get a lot of resistance for our day, like, I’m going to get resistance from family, I’m going to get resistance from friends, I’m going to get resents resistance. But that doesn’t mean that I should stop, right? Like, I could be the one that is the disk, the difference between this being like, a successful endeavor, and not because I’m making money or not, because I have a bunch of likes and followers, but because it feeds my soul, and it makes me happy. And at the end of the day, I think that, that it is that resistance at the end of the day is fueled by fear. You know, in this book, it says resistance has no strength of its own. It has no strength. It’s like dating a narcissist.
The narcissist only has power, if you allow them to have power, once you cut them off, and you cut them out of your life, their power over you is gone, there’s going to be residual trauma, because I myself am still dealing with residual trauma from being with a narcissist myself, but you cut the power of the narcissist off when you remove yourself from the situation. And I think, you know, that’s like, the goal here is to not give resistance, the power. So if you’re constantly afraid, of, of, of everything that’s going to happen, this resistance just keeps building. But if you can, if you can conquer your fear, for example, a fear that I have is that I’m going to put this podcast out and nobody’s going to listen to it.
Or that I’m going to put this podcast out. And I’m going to get a bunch of flack for it. Because I I’m going to say stuff probably wrong, I’m going to have my own opinions that people aren’t going to agree with, I’m going to tell a story that people are going to tell me to shut up, you know, like that I shouldn’t talk about those things on a public platform. And a lot of this stuff, there’s a lot of fear that I have that surrounds what I do. But I’m not letting it stop me. I’ll tell you a story I in high school and college, I was so terrified of public speaking, that I would literally get so nervous that my throat would close up and I couldn’t breathe, and I would pass out. Now it only happened once where it actually passed out and fell over.
But because it happened once I was like the fear would just build and build and build and build. And I was just so terrified that I just stopped, I stopped doing it. Like I stopped acting because I was so terrified of being in front of people I stopped singing because I was so terrified. My fear was stopping me from doing all the things I wanted to do. And then I was also on top of that in a relationship with somebody who was telling me I wasn’t good enough that I couldn’t do these things that I didn’t deserve to have everything that I wanted that I didn’t have enough talent, you know, there was all this fear being built into me in addition to my own fear from public speaking.
So as I you know, as I got sober and was trying to conquer some of these fears, I got myself a job hosting trivia at a bar. Okay, so here’s two things I’m trying to conquer in this. In this goal is one is conquering the fear of public speaking because now I am speaking in front of a large group of people, and to is being able to be in a bar again and not drink. So I challenged myself with this because I wanted to not be afraid I didn’t want my public speaking career to stop. Because what that was doing was holding me back from everything I wanted to do. I want to be an actor. I want to be stage performer I want to sing, I want to be able to talk in front of groups of people. And my light wasn’t able to shine.
Because I was so afraid, I was afraid that I wasn’t going to be any good that nobody was going to like me that I was going to fail, that people were going to laugh me off stage. But like it ended up being, I did it for like six months before COVID hit, and everything got shut down. I was going to that bar every week and hosting trivia and having a frickin blast. My first couple of shows were difficult, but it got easier and easier. And I was able to like get back into doing the things that I wanted to do. Now I still get nervous before every show, I still feel like throwing up and passing out. But the whole, the whole idea here is that you continue to push through it.
Because it’s worth it, like letting fear stop you from doing the things that you want to do in love like that, that’s just not gonna work. Like that’s, that’s one of the things that can hold you back so much in your life is that you’re just so afraid, whatever that whatever that is, the next thing is like procrastination. I am the queen of procrastinating goodness gracious, like, I will find every reason or excuse not to do something or put it off till later. But I’ll still worry about it and think about that thing until I get it done. Case in point is like when I was doing contract work. And I would give a deadline to a client. And I’d give myself plenty of time to do the work.
But I would just worry about it for the week and then do it, you know, an hour before it was actually due before the time so I’m still delivering the goods. But I’ve stressed myself out for a week. And I’ve procrastinated and didn’t do the thing. So it’s the same thing with resistance is like that’s a form of resistance is is allowing your procrastination to get the best of you right? Like it is it is crazy. To just like, succumb to that part of of the process. Yeah, the biggest thing I would say, I’m just gonna start tomorrow, like, I’ll do that thing tomorrow. I’ll do it tomorrow. No, no, do it today. Because you actually have the opportunity to sit down and do whatever it is right now. Like, that’s the practice that I’m trying to do.
So here’s here’s the challenge I want to put out. And here’s, here’s what I want to put together, I’m going to create a worksheet. And I’ll make this available for download in the comments section on YouTube. If you’re watching a YouTube video, or if you’re listening to the podcast, you can go to Girl vs world.com. Again, that’s vs V e r s us.com. Excuse me, and I’ll have a link there for you to download it. And in this worksheet. The goal here will be to write down for the next week, the next seven days, write down every time you fought resistance. And I mean any any type of thing, I want you to write it down. So for example, if you thought about writing today, if you’re a writer, you thought about writing today and you actually sit down and wrote, write that down. If you did self care instead of something else, like some other priority, write that down. If you sat down and read a book, instead of cleaning the house, or like doing all these other obligations, write that down.
And at the end of the week, I want you to look at that list, the goal will be to fill up that page, fill it up with things that you did that fought resistance every time you in your brain when it said no, I’ll just do this later. If you instead said, I’m going to do this now. Write that down. And I want you to do that every day for seven days. And then I want you to look at that list. And look at what you’ve been able to achieve. Every single line item on that worksheet is a success. And I want you to give yourself praise for doing it. It might feel silly at first, but I promise you if you start to do this what I do, I don’t have my phone near me but what I do on my phone is I open up a notepad if I don’t if I can’t write it down. What I’ll do is I’ll open a notepad and I will write down every time I fight resistance every time and I jot it down I just type it out I said okay Today, my brain told me not to do the thing that my therapist recommended. So like, you know, whatever that thing was.
So like, my therapist recommended a book the previous week, I didn’t buy the book, I put it in my shopping cart, but I didn’t buy it. However, this last week, I bought the book. So it’s coming. So instead of leaving it in the shopping cart thinking, I don’t have money for this, or whatever the excuse is, I’ll order it later, I went ahead and ordered it. So it’s stuff like that. And so at the end of the week, if you want to share them with us on the blog, that would be great, we’d love to see it, I’d love to see examples. And if not, that’s fine, too. But what I want you to do is take that sheet at the end of the week, look at them and read out each line item, and hug yourself and say thank you for taking that time. It’s going to feel silly at first.
But I promise you, if you get in the habit of thanking yourself, for fighting resistance, there’s a change in your brain, that’s going to start happening. Because now you’re rewarding yourself for doing things for yourself. And for a lot of us, that’s a hard thing to do. I am a people pleaser. I am a service kind of person. And I want to help everybody else by myself. And that comes from a long background of bullshit that I’m still sorting through. But when I do stuff like this, and I do self care, and I do these types of tasks, and I thank myself for it, man, does my life feel a lot more manageable and easy.
You know, like, if you can focus on things like this, read your books, like I recommend getting this book, I’m going to finish it myself, but I can’t say enough nice things about it. But do the worksheet exercise. Even if you only do it for seven days, I encourage you to always do it just make it part of like part of your week. Some people are into meditation, maybe one day a week of meditation, you can thank yourself for doing the things. And you know what, if you don’t have a long list, and you didn’t get to it this week, please don’t beat yourself up over it. You can start today and try it again. Because nobody gets anything right on the first try. I know I haven’t. It’s been I’ve been very fortunate to get things right on the first try, but not very often in my life. So if you try this and you fail at it, quote unquote, fail you.
Let’s start over, just start over, print out a new sheet. It’s a new week, start over and start writing it and start thanking yourself for it. I promise you with exercises like this. And choosing to fight your resistance instead of letting it letting fear take over and holding you back. You are going to see the biggest transformation in your life. So that’s my challenge for you this week, download the worksheet and start finding that resistance and allowing the change and and the fulfillment of of the things that you want to do in your life. Allow it to wash over you and thank yourself for it. I’ll talk to you next time. Thank you so much for listening to our episode. Today. I am your podcast host and producer Nicole Samra and the music for this show is called 80s pop dreams by soundtracks. If you loved our episode today, please feel free to give us a rating on whatever network you’re tuning in on and we look forward to having you back next week.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
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