Rolling with Resistance

This is chapter nine of the Quit Giving Up ebook. You can get the whole thing in our shop now!

As a counselor, one of the biggest difficulties clients present with at some point in their counseling is they hit resistance within themselves. Initially, they decided they wanted to stop feeling anxious and depressed or using drugs. After some hard work, maybe some failures, not finding immediate peace and relief, and the need for even more hard work, they become ambivalent about making more changes.

Ambivalence is understanding we want to stop doing what we were doing before, but we are becoming painfully aware the change we seek is not going to be pleasant.

Think about wanting to start your own online website for your brand or ministry. What is it people obsess about? Colors, logos, frequency of posting, sidebar layouts, navigation, and landing page all feel important, but this is all honestly resistance. Sure, it’s important to have these things, but to create something amazing, honestly, all you need is to post.

Ambivalence does not happen only at the beginning, though it is more prevalent. You can have ambivalence when you find success. The fear of being successful, of now being held to a new standard, can be crippling. Creating a great stage design is awesome. You know what is even more awesome? A better stage design next time. And what about the time after that? Of course, the budget always increases, but the funds to do so do not, so you’ll have to figure that out later. And now, we begin to experience resistance.

Rolling with resistance is simply an acknowledgment the pain (financially, emotionally, spiritually, cognitively) is being experienced and then deciding if it is worth it to keep changing. Each stage of change may require a different kind of rolling with resistance.

At the beginning of your project and stuck on ambivalence? Make a pros and cons list. Be brutally honest. If the pros list is longer, then suck it up and do it. Obviously not every con is weighted the same, but at least be fair.

Stuck at the point of trying to find out what is working and can’t seem to get it right? Talk with someone you know in your industry who is being successful and pick their brain. It might be time to get a mentor, coach from another ministry, or go to the board of elders. Let them speak into what you are doing.

Starting to find some great success and worried it’s going to weigh you down? Take a minute to remember why you decided to start this ministry in the first place. What was it that made you want to join you’re the church’s outreach team or create videos on YouTube? What need did you have to fulfill? Have you lost sight of this?

Remember, it’s not our job to fix the situation today, simply to understand what the resistance is and accept it.

What other barriers do you see coming up that you need to begin to simply acknowledge they are present in your life?