Is Mental Resistance Blocking You From Everything You Want?

Ever decide to change your life but your progress ends up petering out? It might have been a change like weight loss, a new wellness routine, a creative project, higher education, or a business venture. You decide to change, devise a plan, maybe invest in needed “supplies”. You even tell your friends or spouse about this exciting new change. You set out on this path, wide-eyed and bushy-tailed — your optimism runneth over.

But, somewhere in the early days of this new change, you find your motivation wanes, and you begin slipping back into your old well-worn routines again.

This is about when you’ll meet “the gatekeeper,” also known as mental resistance.

This gatekeeper might convince you that your idea is stupid, you’re not prepared, you’re not strong enough and you’re probably going to make a fool of yourself.

If you’ve ever run into this gatekeeper before then you’ve been acquainted with mental resistance.

The antidote? Conscious awareness of the mental roadblock your subconscious has placed in your path. Simple, right?

Spoiler: that gatekeeper is lying.

Let’s talk about mental resistance and how it may be keeping you stuck.

What’s mental resistance?

In behavioural psychology, mental resistance is known as a physiological force you may experience as a response to any type of change. Resistance causes us to make unconscious paradoxical decisions. So, no matter how excited or motivated you are, your psyche naturally moves counter to change without you realizing it.

Author of The War of Art, Steven Pressfield insists that “the more important the call or action is to our soul’s evolution, the more resistance we will feel toward pursuing it” but, “resistance is always lying and is always full of shit”.

So, in order to achieve the change, you long for, you’ll have to defeat an innate, subconscious, and hard-wired resistance mechanism.

The first, most powerful, step is to become aware of what you’re dealing with. Otherwise, you’ve put your resistant subconscious mind in the driver’s seat with that gatekeeper as the pushy backseat driver.

What are the symptoms of mental resistance?

Mental resistance is subconscious so it’s happening outside of our conscious control. So, the trick is to disempower this force by becoming conscious of the unconscious and make conscious decisions instead.

Pinpointing the subconscious self-sabotaging behaviours that are keeping you stuck is everything.

Here are some common signs of mental resistance:

• Feeling stuck
• Agitation
• Anxiety
• Chronic procrastination
• Making frequent excuses
• Abusing sex, drugs, over shopping or food as a means of distraction
• Worried about what others will think
• Worried you’ll look stupid for trying
• Perfectionism (all or nothing thinking)
• Overthinking (analysis paralysis)
• Self-doubt and fear
• Telling yourself you can’t do it
• Imposter syndrome
• Pointing out reasons you’ll fail before you ever try
• Deciding you’re not smart enough, pretty enough, skinny enough, strong enough, talented enough, etc so you might as well stop while you’re ahead
• Making decisions that sabotage your efforts

Resistance is your clever subconscious trying to keep you safe

The idea of mental resistance is very similar to the concept of the homeostatic impulse. This subconscious impulse controls our breathing, temperature, and heart rate as it is a part of our autonomic nervous system. As this balance-prioritizing impulse regulates the physical body, it also works to regulate the mental state.

Often, this impulse can be activated just by us attempting to wade into the uncharted territory of unlived dreams and deepest aspirations.

Holistic psychologist Dr. Nicole LePera says the “overwhelming pull of the subconscious mind makes it hard for us to change” because we’re simply not wired for change. Our homeostatic impulse attempts to keep us safe and steers us away from the unfamiliar. This is why it’s so “unsettling and even exhausting when our routines are disrupted” making it hard to sustain changes in routine.

Extending self-compassion to ourselves is helpful as we realize every time we’ve “failed” to change, it was likely because our clever minds were trying to revert us back to how we’ve always survived (homeostatic impulse). Thus sabotaging our efforts to change.

Becoming mindful of resistance behaviours

The trick is understanding that resistance (your subconscious) may pull out all the cunning stops to keep you right where you are. All because your desire to realize your passion is being perceived as a threat. So, your subconscious is trying to steer you away, back to safety.

This sets up unconscious decision-making habits that sabotage you.

Be honest with yourself and become mindful of the habitual products of mental resistance and push against them. Remember, resistance lies.

Take note of any self-sabotaging behaviours (see above). You may find a pattern — i.e the insidious habitual manifestation of resistance.

“Procrastination is the most common manifestation of Resistance because it’s the easiest to rationalize. We don’t tell ourselves, “I’m never going to write my symphony.”

Instead, we say, ‘I am going to write my symphony; I’m just going to start tomorrow.’”

– Steven Pressfield

Successful people aren’t special, they just work despite resistance

The difference between a successful painter and someone who longs to paint but doesn’t is, the painter sits down to paint.

They begin their work even though their mind is telling them things like, “you’ll never make a living like this” and “everything has already been done”. They work despite their mean old gatekeeper, and they walk through that gate to the other side.

The people who are living out your dream are no better and no worse, they just worked through their resistance impulses and made conscious choices that override their subconscious.

Mental resistance could be what is keeping you from that thing you’ve always wanted. And it will keep you from it forever — if you let it.

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