Resistance – we all feel it when trying something new. And the bigger the goal, the more it kicks in.
Especially when we’re dealing with communication skills, which can feel deeply personal and tied to our identity.
I often say to clients that they’ll inevitably doubt – or judge – any or all of these things at some point in the process:
- Themselves.
- The content/resources.
- Me (even if it’s only deciding that I’ve made dubious outfit choices!)
When you do feel resistance to what’s happening, it’s normal. We’re conditioned as human beings to react and resist with some degree of doubt and fear when we experience something that doesn’t feel like “us”.
To give you a personal example:
When I moved to Australia from the UK, I talked quietly. And people couldn’t hear what I was saying!
Ordering food in a cafe, chatting with colleagues…I was asked to speak up all the time. And I was insecure (new country, new people) and became a bit resentful.
I didn’t want to be a ‘loud’ person (a family thing growing up): “Can’t I just be myself?”.
But it wasn’t working for me! I needed to be effective for other people, which would also help me. So I gradually turned the volume dial up – and everyone’s life got easier.
The big problem was that I associated change with my identity – and that’s high stakes for our resistance radar.
3 other key reasons why we feel resistance to new things:
- Uncertainty. Our brains like as much predictability as possible. You’re not sure what’s coming, and your brain is a pattern-making machine, always searching for order.
- Entrenched thought patterns. When you say: “I’m X”, or “They always think Y”, you’ve created that belief, and can prove it’s true – because at one point it was.
- Lack of control. The fear of being helpless and unable to protect yourself properly.
These are big, and very real, aren’t they?
So, some suggestions:
I’m a big believer in the change that’s possible when we can look at what we’re telling ourselves and realise that it’s normal, our brain just doing its thing to try and protect us.
And every time we over-ride it makes a difference.
- Awareness first.
- Repetition next.
Anyone who works at a high-performance level knows that awareness is the always the first step.
You can then start to notice it happening next time and catch yourself early enough to shift gears.
And backing this up is something called LTP, long-term potentiation, with some studies showing that it only takes three repetitions of a routine or thought process to begin wiring it into our brains.
I know this is true:
As a professional classical pianist, I’d always aim to have 2 full run-throughs for an important concert before the day.
By the 3rd go, the order of pieces and full flow impact with no stopping/rewinding allowed, I felt settled and ready.
(This is very common for musicians, my friends would often do the same.)
I also used to tell myself when I felt particularly nervous: “it’s part of the deal”.
So to sum up the problem:
- Resistance is inevitable.
- It will appear any time something matters to you.
- And the bigger the project – real or perceived – the more resistance you’ll feel.
The best solutions? Get aware, take action, repeat.
Finishing with a quote which is simple but hopefully useful for cutting through the internal noise:
“What you are is what you have been. What you’ll be is what you do now.” – Buddha
And a post on resisting change from Psychology Today.
