Your Status Quo has its own Guardian
This Guardian exists in the space between where you are right now and anything outside of your comfort zone.
Change is uncomfortable. Even when change is positive, it’s still outside of our comfort zone and fear will creep in. Fear of the unknown, fear of failure, fear of success, and fear of how others will react can keep us in a state of inertia, making it difficult to make the changes needed for our own growth and development.
As a coach, I’m in the business of personal change and meeting people in their discomfort. One of the most transformational elements of my Lil' Habit method is Meeting Your Resistance.
Think of Resistance as the guardian of your status quo. This guardian exists in the space between where you are right now and anything you desire that sits outside of your comfort zone. When you do something that shakes up your status quo, Resistance initiates its best strategy to make you knock that sh*t off. Not because it wants you to be a failure, but because it wants to keep you comfortable.
The go-to tool of Resistance is the story it’s mastered throughout its years as guardian of your status quo. Maybe the story is that you have more important things to do or the story could be that the circumstances aren't optimal (too cold, too late, too tired). I have a “you deserve it” story that works like magic to keep me in my comfort zone. It goes something like this:
“You deserve to skip it, you have worked soooo hard and nobody should have to work that hard all the time, so you deserve to take a day off. Give yourself a break! Here’s a list of all the things that you deserve that will make you feel good. You deserve to feel good!”
If that sounds like self-care and healthy boundaries to you, that’s no accident. That’s what appeals to me about that story! But when you add the context of the task at hand, like 30-seconds of mindful breathing or one page of journaling, you can see how silly that story really is. Do I really “deserve a break” from 30-seconds of breathing?
At Lil’ Habit we engage a new daily habit that triggers your Resistance so that you can become aware of the familiar narrative that kicks in to stop you. Then we work to uncouple YOU from your Resistance, so that you can begin to experience it as a third party who gives laughably terrible advice.
Once you identify the story, you can learn how to consistently move past the guardian of your status quo so that you can get all the goodies that exist outside of your comfort zone.
If you want to get good at change, make peace with your Resistance.