Characteristics of The Resistance:
- Thwarts all challenging meaningful goals
- Invisible pervasive repulsive force that keeps us from meaningful work
- Values short term gains over long term goals
- Does not sleep
- Impersonal, indifferent force of nature
- Can point towards goals worth pursuing
- Universal
- Fueled by fear
- Acts against directions of high effort (ignores downhill efforts)
- Strongest at the finish line
- Recruits allies you trust
- Procrastination
- Can be overturned at any time
- Can overwhelm at any time
- Creates drama
- Can lead to anxiety and despair
- Makes us play the victim
- Can lead us to envy and criticize others
- Can lead to false fear of isolation
- Loves negative rationalizations
- Can be beaten
For ideas on how to beat the Resistance, see Agency articles.
Knowing the enemy is a first step in beating the enemy. The Resistance is a universal experience that hinders all people from achieving their potential. Recognizing the symptoms of resistance can help us to make choices that beat it.
Preparation Steps
- Reflect on one’s own experiences of resistance and how one succumbed or beat it
- Research scaffolds that teach oneself and students how to build up the 4 resiliences (weapons against the resistance). See Agency articles for ideas.
- Build up reflection prompts that get students to reflect upon the Resistance in productive ways
Early Implementation Steps
- Be aware of signs of the Resistance in the classroom
- Teach students to recognize and thwart symptoms of the Resistance
- Ask students to reflect upon and share experiences of times when they successfully battled the Resistance. Use these stories, to extract strategies built from student stories to fight the Resistance.
Advanced Implementation Steps
- Let students listen to or read helpful excerpts from The War of Art for inspiration and generative reflections.
- Have students reflection on classroom conditions that can be improved to better fight The Resistance and implement, test, and refine these.
