How are you living your “one wild and precious life” (to quote Mary Oliver)? Do you struggle to do the things you want to do? Do you feel like you’re four steps behind where you want to be? Do you feel like you work and work and work but that your work never gets you anywhere you want to be?

This is exactly how I have felt for the past two or three years. Ever since I graduated from college I’ve been stuck in a rut that I know isn’t where I want to be, but from which I seem unable to free myself. It was a state of affairs that left me feeling frustrated and baffled and kept me from living my best life. Until recently, that is, when I read this article by Martha Beck, in which she writes:

“As every life coach knows, the way we do anything is the way we do everything. The same thoughts… torture me when I’m writing, emailing, even sleeping. I should be going faster, getting somewhere. I should have more to show for this. I shouldn’t have to double back, to revisit old emotional issues, to wipe the same damn kitchen counter every day. These thoughts burble along just under the surface of my consciousness every day. They make me slightly anxious—okay, some days irrationally terrified—and lend a driven quality to moments when I could be relaxed and present.” [[Emphasis mine.]]

And, you guys, it was like a thunderclap in my head as, with a whooshing sound, I realized something incredibly profound:

I do everything in my life with resistance.

Every single thing I do I treat as though it’s a struggle. Getting out of bed in the morning is a drag. Making my lunch is a drag. My day job — a double drag.

By the time I get home at night I’m so tired from dragging myself around all day that the things I actually wanted to do with my evening turn out to be… you guessed it, a drag!

Because my chosen after work activities (like my writing!) felt like a drag, I would often avoid them. And then I would feel terrible guilt for having avoided doing the things I was “supposed to” do. (Even if they only person who had decided I was “supposed to” do them was myself.)

But what if it didn’t have to be like that?

What if your life could be effortless and joyful instead of a drag?

What if you could make your life effortless simply by choosing to stop resisting what is? These questions have been plaguing me for the better part of a week  — and I have to tell you, the results so far have been nothing short of amazing. Already my life feels lighter and more joyful. Already I am beginning to find space to breathe for what seems like the first time in years (decades even).

I’m finding myself sitting down to happily do tasks that I have resisted for years. Suddenly my writing practice, which I have struggled to grow into anything robust, feels almost effortless.

I used to fall into a trap where I knew I wanted to write, at least in theory. But whenever I had the time to write I would find myself doing something else — anything else.

If you find yourself struggling to achieve your goals, I invite you to ask yourself this question:

What are you really resisting?

Because what I now realize is that I was resisting becoming the person I really want to be.

Somewhere deep down in my lizard-brain I was still struggling to hold onto my vision of myself as I am/was: the good student, the scientist, the professional. I wasn’t allowing myself to set aside those old dreams in order to step fully into the person I am interested in becoming: the adventurer, the poet, the writer.

So if your dreams seem continually out of reach, or you’re always struggling but never really satisfied with your success, I invite you to question what it is you’re actually struggling against.

Because if you are like me, you might just find that you’ve been struggling against yourself.

And the only thing I know for sure is that that is a battle we’ll never manage to win.

 

I’d love to hear from you! What are you struggling with in your life? What seems to be holding you back? What is it that keeps getting in your way?

Let me know in the comments below!