resistance

The resistance is like a church bell ringing in my soul

I’m supposed to be writing my graduate school admission essay, but it’s hard. It’s hard because it matters. It’s hard because it’s personal. It’s hard because it’s about me and that brings up all of my fears, insecurities, and self doubt. 

Doing something like this brings me face to face with the stories I tell myself about my worth and my worthiness, about what it means to be accepted, and about what it means to be loved and received as I am, not as I pretend to be. 

Writing about myself, why I want this, and why I am the right candidate and this is the right school for me terrifies me because it exposes me. It exposes me because I refuse to give them only part of me. I don’t know how, and that’s not what they are asking for. It terrifies me because, if I give them all of me, what if that is not good enough? 

This fear, this paralyzing, mind-numbing, soul-shaking fear is how I know it’s important. It’s how I know it’s real. It’s how I know that I have to do it. The fear tells me where to go, even if I don’t want to go there, even if I hate the feeling of moving forward. 

The resistance is like a church bell ringing in my soul. It won’t leave me alone. It calls to me. It draws me nearer. It’s an inevitability. With every passing day and every toll of the bell, I can feel the pull toward the work that I must do. Even as I write this, seemingly in avoidance of the call, it has brought me one step closer to finishing the hard work of facing myself. 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

To read my poetry and shorter writing, please visit Meditations of a Gentle Warrior and subscribe to receive my daily meditations in your inbox. 

Get to work

Make your creative work easy to do. Not that creative work is easy, but make it easy to access. Reduce the friction that keeps you from doing it. Take away as many excuses as you can before you even start so that starting is easy. 

Put your creative time on your calendar. Block it off. Do it at the same time every day. Never double-book during your creative time. Give yourself a quiet space to work. Have your commonly used tools ready and available so that all you need to do is to pick them up. Tune out distractions or better yet, turn them off altogether. 

Whatever you need to do in order to make it easy to do your creative work, do it. Every little thing adds up. Remove all of the obstacles in your path until it is just you and your work. Now the easy part is done. The hard part is actually doing the work. 

Now that you have no excuses, the only thing standing between you and your art is you. When you have removed all external resistance and you are finally standing face-to-face with your work, and you still don’t want to, don’t know how to, or can’t get started, you have just met the real problem. 

Get over yourself and get to work.