By Joyce Thom M.P.AÂ
Do you ever find it difficult to move a project forward? As a successful leader, you are known for achieving goals. You have lots of experience overcoming external obstacles to progress, but what happens when the resistance you encounter is coming from inside yourself?
First, let’s look at typical patterns of internal resistance and how they can affect your energy. What do you do when you have an important project or task that you are not particularly excited about or simply don’t want to do?
Patterns of resistance
- Steamroll: Do you drive forward anyway, steamrolling over your internal resistance? This form of resistance can feel like trying to make headway while pushing a boulder up a mountain or swimming upstream against a current. You get the job done, but it drains your energy more than doing similar tasks would because you find yourself working so hard to overcome your resistance.
- Stall: Do you distract yourself with other activities that suddenly become higher priorities? This type of resistance can feel like being sidetracked or sucked in by diversions that enable you to feel productive while avoiding work on the dreaded project. Sure, you may get a lot of other things accomplished, but are you really doing what needs to be done? Do you avoid the task until you cannot put it off any longer, and then rush to get it done at the last minute? This pattern of procrastination delays the project and disperses much of your energy by dodging what you don’t want to do and spending resources on other efforts.
- Stop: Do you find that some projects just don’t get done even though you have the time and capacity to do them? This kind of resistance can feel like running into a brick wall. You know they are priorities, but when you try to work on them, you simply can’t seem to engage. In this case, your energy feels stuck or blocked because you cannot move forward.
About the Author – Joyce Thom
Speaker, Executive Coach, and Catalyst for Change
Joyce Thom is a Speaker, Executive Coach, and Catalyst for Change in the fields of resilience, wellness, growth, and conscious leadership. Joyce holds a Masters in Public Administration from Princeton University and received her BA from Yale University. She has studied mind-body wellness for over 40 years and teaches seminars around the world on meditation, Qigong, yoga, healing arts, somatic embodiment and emotional intelligence work.
In Silicon Valley, Joyce led business and product innovations at Intuit, eBay, and SRI International and was CEO of a database infrastructure startup. After seeing the impacts of stress in high pressure environments, she founded EnergyAtWork.co in 2002 to help executives and entrepreneurs accelerate their growth while bringing more balance and satisfaction to their lives. She is passionate about helping leaders and their organizations manage their energy effectively so they can connect deeply with their purpose and feel more fulfilled while contributing more substantially and sustainably to the world.
