Releasing Resistance and Taking Aligned Action
There’s a reason why taking the ‘first step’ is a universal struggle for so many people.
The resistance to taking that first step is a product of reaching the extents of where your current identity feels safe.
The resistance represents the line where the perceived threat begins.
This is a line we encounter many a times on our path whether you’re going to the first rodeo of your dreams or your 27th.
Speaking of rodeo, here’s a cow story to help you understand how you might feel right now…
Have you ever seen a cow approach a different texture of ground?
It’s quite interesting and even funny.
A couple months back there was a little fiasco on the cattle ranch I live on.
Cows got into the creek and last light was in the air for the day.
The banks of the creek are very steep and they are filled with poison oak, sharp bramble, and stinging nettle.
The cows don’t mind too much, in fact they were delighted with all the green goodness to munch on, but for humans, that’s an awful combo of foliage to bushwhack.
Its was a shitshow to say the least, but I kept my cool in the fresh pajamas I had just put on that I pulled over my knees as I waded through the creek moments after I just showered, shaving cream still on my face. Not the best attire for the job to say the least.
Nonetheless, after hours of telepathic communication and ‘yip yipping’ we got the cows up to a plateau where our wooden bridge that leads back home spans the creek.
We gently walked the cows towards the bridge, but as we came within inches of the wood every single cow baulked at the threshold where the dirt meets the bridge.
After hours of creeks shenanigans, that threshold was really what spooked them?
It was strange and cute.
Massive 1600 pound cows spooked silly right there of all places.
They wouldn’t budge.
We had to lean into, hoping not to get kicked, just to encourage them to move onto the bridge.
Reluctantly, they traversed the bridge with their hooves and made it back home into the corral that opens to the abundant hillside.
This is similar to that first step we resist.
If we fully believed in the abundant hillsides across the bridge, well shucks – I guess we wouldn’t struggle with that proverbial first step.
A first step that we all already taken many a times in smaller ways, might I add.
It’s not the step itself that is necessarily precarious, it can be of course, but rather it is dangerous because it represents a crossing into territory we don’t yet know.
So f*ck yeah we are going to resist it like the plague because we are wired to maintain safety and mitigate threat at all costs.
The paradox is that whatever is on the other side of that threshold is what we know we want, but we don’t know what we can’t know of the unknown so we tend to maintain our position.
The cows didn’t know that just beyond that spooky, but very robust and stable, wooden bride was everything they needed and more.
Food, water, space, birds to rest on their forehead, freedom from the yip yipping…
The same holds true for us.
Everything that we desire lives beyond that threshold, but that threshold is an intimate and tricky moment.
To take that first step requires you to shed all the baggage, doubt, and disbelief that are the very things that cause the resistance to you taking that first step.
We don’t need to do anything in particular other than to release the resistance that is attached to the part of us that cannot continue beyond that position.
Its like a pool floaty.
Now hear me out…
The floaty naturally floats, but to submerge it takes an amount of pressure to resist its natural inclination.
For the floaty to return to the surface, IT doesn’t have to do anything.
All that needs to occur is the release of the resistance.
Resisting this release is why the first step is difficult.
Its what you know, its familiar.
Its how things are because its how things have been.
But it doesn’t have to be how things will be moving forward.
Our natural inclination is growth.
All of that can change, adapt, and evolve as you learn to deconstruct those parts of you that cannot pass through that threshold so that the natural true version of you can continue on its journey of self-actualization.
Many of us stand at threshold between the dirt and the bridge for many many years.
It need not be that way any longer.
It feels safe to keep your dreams at a distance, but to which part of you is that consoling?
I’ll let you answer that one.
My desire is to help you traverse that tricky threshold.
The self-study Imperfectionist Workshop is live!
It’s a 2-part masterclass on deconstructing fear to cultivate freedom so that you can create a more authentic version of success and fulfillment.
There’s 10 modules of supplemental support and some bonus videos to help facilitate that ‘first step’ however new or seasoned you might be on the path of cultivating freedom.
