Reinvention Month 3: Moving with Chatter

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I'm keeping up the fight to overcome what Stephen Pressfield calls "resistance." How do I keep moving forward? How can you move forward on the urge to create, build something, change something?

*Don't listen to the chatter. Pay no attention to the those rambling, disjointed images and notions that drift across the movie screen of your mind. THOSE ARE NOT YOUR THOUGHTS. THEY ARE CHATTER. THEY ARE RESISTANCE.

Chatter is your mother and father's well-intentioned expressions of caution, seeking to shield you from hurting yourself. Chatter is your teachers' equally well-meaning attempts at socialization, training you to follow the rules. Chatter is your friends' regular-Joe buddy-talk, trying to make you like them and follow the rules of the pack.

Okay, I'm getting better about the chatter. I'm letting it come and go like wind. Sometimes my hair gets in my eyes. Sometimes I have to sit down. But I'm moving forward. Now what?

*COVER THE CANVAS. ONE RULE FOR FIRST FULL WORKING DRAFTS: GET THEM DONE ASAP. Don't worry about quality. Act, don't reflect. Momentum is everything. Get to THE END as if the devil himself were breathing down your neck and poking you in the butt with his pitchfork.

DON'T STOP. DON'T LOOK DOWN. DON'T THINK. SUSPEND ALL SELF-JUDGMENT. THE INNER CRITIC? HIS ASS IS NOT PERMITTED IN THE BUILDING.

*from Pressfield's new book, Do the Work.

Reinvention at 2 Months: Warrior in Hiding

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As Spring began, I took on the task of reinvention--of seeing if I could consciously change from the inside out and operate out of a new identity more in alignment with the life of creative purpose I want to live.

I created a new identity to embrace--that of a Warrior of Aliveness--and set out to activate that Warrior within. I sought out power sources and consciously adjusted my inner dialogue to think differently and then act out of that new thinking.

From the start I met with an internal saboteur, what Stephen Pressfield calls "resistance," somehow infusing me with unwarrior-like complaints and excuses. Each time I thought I was making progress, a part of me revolted and went into hiding. Each time I attempted to gird my Warrior loins I looked to see my fly open on my couch potato's boxer shorts. I avoided my blog. I avoided life more often than usual. I felt stalled, stuck.

Yes, I admit it, after two months I just have not made the reinvention progress I had hoped for. I'm not proud. But I am also not done. I'm not giving up the battle. I may not yet be that Warrior I want to be but I am in small steps getting to know him better. I will talk to him directly in the next blog entry. For now, I am left with this from Pressfield's new book, Do the Work, as he describes "resistance," the force that stops us from doing the creative work and making changes in habits that we want:

Resistance is Insidious. Resistance will tell you anything to keep you from doing your work. It will perjure, fabricate, falsify; seduce, bully, cajole. Resistance is protean. It will assume any form, if that's what it takes to deceive you.
Resistance will reason with you like a lawyer or jam a nine-millimeter in your face like a stickup man. Resistance has no conscience. It will pledge anything to get a deal, then double-cross you as soon as your back is turned.
Resistance is always lying and always full of shit.