Join me, Kathie Owen, in this enlightening episode where we tackle the ever-present challenge of resistance and the journey toward personal and professional growth. Inspired by the profound insights of Steven Pressfield's "The War of Art", this episode is a blend of personal anecdotes, practical advice, and motivational insights.
What's Inside: 🔹 The Reality of Resistance: From technical troubles to inner doubts, learn how resistance manifests in everyday life and how to confront it head-on. 🔹 Embracing Simplicity: Discover the power of the KISS principle - Keep It Simple Silly - and how it can transform challenges into opportunities. 🔹 Motivation Myths Debunked: We delve into the truth behind National Quitters Day and explore how to cultivate lasting motivation. 🔹 Pressfield's Perspective on Resistance: A deep dive into the concept of resistance as described by Steven Pressfield, and how it applies to our daily lives. 🔹 Balancing the Ego: Learn how to navigate the tricky waters of ego in personal development. 🔹 The Power of Self-Awareness and Intuition: Uncover the role of intuition in overcoming obstacles and achieving your goals.
Special Segment: 🌟 12-Day Challenge Announcement: I'm excited to introduce a transformative 12-day challenge starting February 1st, focused on overcoming resistance and harnessing your inner strength. https://www.kathieowen.com/resistance
Why Listen: Whether you’re facing technical hurdles, battling self-doubt, or simply seeking inspiration to push through life’s resistances, this episode is for you. Gain insights into making simplicity your strength, understand the dual nature of motivation, and learn how to balance ambition with self-care.
Join the Conversation: 💬 Share your experiences with resistance and what strategies work for you. Let's build a community of support and growth.
Subscribe and Stay Tuned: 🔔 Don't forget to subscribe for more content on personal growth, motivation, and overcoming life's challenges. Your journey to a more fulfilling life starts here!
Timestamps: 00:00 Challenges and Resistance Faced - Opening remarks about technical difficulties, and an introduction to the concept of resistance in daily life. 01:45 Deep Dive into Steven Pressfield's 'The War of Art' - Exploring Steven Pressfield’s perspective on resistance and its impact on personal and professional life. 03:04 KISS Principle and Motivation Insights - Discussion on the 'Keep It Simple Silly' principle, and insights into motivation, including the concept of National Quitters Day. 05: 28 National Quitters Day and the Role of Motivation - Insights into the concept of National Quitters Day and the role of motivation in personal growth. 15:39 Announcement of the 12-Day Challenge and Conclusion - Introducing the 12-day challenge based on the episode's themes and wrapping up with final thoughts. 16:42 The Role of Ego and Self-Awareness - Analyzing how ego influences personal g
Kathie:
This episode was supposed to be on video with a high quality new camera I just got, but oh my gosh, I hit resistance on everything from my computer crashing to recording this video yesterday, and I can't even edit it because it didn't upload into descript properly, and also, let's see what else kind of resistance did I hit? I couldn't find The cord for my ring light because it got put away in Christmas stuff. I had to find that I got that all set up Then when I did put the light on it was so bright that my face was all washed out the camera I don't understand the specs on it. I don't understand what's going on. Yes Resistance across the board. Guess what that was that was trying to keep me from recording Today's episode. Yes That's exactly what that was. You're listening to Kathie's Coaching Podcast. I'm your host, Kathie Owen. I'm sorry, I'm not on camera today. But as you heard in my intro, it just wasn't meant to be. I woke up this morning and thought to myself, what am I going to do? I even had dreams about it. How am I going to get this episode up? I need to get this episode up this week, in the next couple of days. That means I've got to record it, edit it, get it in a blog post. What else do I do for this? I have to do so many different things, but I have to get in flow for all of that to work properly. But I kept hitting resistance. And I'm going to be talking about the book, The War of Art by Steven Pressfield, and talking about resistance that he talks about in that. Because I notice, if you're human, You are going to hit resistance. 100 percent across the board. All of my clients hit resistance in some shape, form, or fashion. Myself included, I hit resistance. And that's what Steven Pressfield talks about in his book. But my favorite part, my favorite part of the book is at the end. When he talks about becoming a professional. And we all are professionals in some aspect of our life. And also he talks about the angels, the muses, all the things that come into play that help us along the way. Because this morning as I sat there with my resistance thinking, Oh, I'll just wait till next week because I have a meeting with the people who I got my camera with to help me set it up and get it all good. And so I thought to myself, well, I'll just wait one more week. No, Kathie that's not gonna happen. Because I sat there and talked to my intuition. And this is what happened. At first I was like, what am I supposed to do? Please give me an answer. Please give me an answer. So I started getting ready for work, getting ready for my day. And what came to me was KISS. KISS. It's an acronym that I use, and I use it often, and it's called Keep It Simple Silly. Write that down, get a tattoo, keep it on top of mind all the time, I tell myself. Because if I keep it simple, it's going to be easy. It's going to happen. I'm going to get in flow. I'm in flow right now. I'm happy. I wish I was on camera, but I'm not going to let the resistance beat me. I'm not gonna quit. January 12th is now called National Quitters Day. No, we are not quitting. My community is not quitting. Do we hit setbacks? Yes, we do. Do we hit things that are called resistance. Yes, that's what we're talking about in today's episode. So, there are statistics that prove and data that proves that January 12th is the day that people, most people, give up on their New Year's resolutions. I have been a trainer for, oh lord, let's see, how long have I been in the gym? 24 years now. And, oh lord, January comes around. I have a love hate relationship with January. And if you listened to my episode last week, I talked about the anxiety that January gives me because my clients get these New Year's resolutions. They have these huge expectations and they want this and they want that. And I have to break it down for them because technically we need to break it down and have New Year's resolutions once a week, once a month, once a day, a resolution. Needs to be an intention, not a resolution. So in the gym, you have people in there crowded like crazy in January. And if you've been going to the gym for a long period of time, like myself, you see who's new. And I love it. I want the best for them, but they give me anxiety. What happens on National Quitters Day is enthusiasm wanes. On my website, I write, Lack of motivation sucks. Don't let that be you. Because I feel like motivation is something that's funny. When somebody talks to me about why they're not working on their goals and why they're not achieving them, what do they say? I always hear, I'm not motivated. I'm just not motivated. Well, guess what? I wasn't motivated this morning when I hit all this resistance. I'm not motivated to get up every day. It's become a habit. But at the same time, I still lack motivation. Every day, I am human. You are human. Give yourself a break. Then, when we go talk about the war of art and resistance, lack of motivation is a resistance. Resistance is described like this. Let me give you the definition from the dictionary first. It is a force, a friction, that operates in the opposite direction of motion of the body and tends to prevent or slow down the body's motion. Remember, we all have resistance. Let's talk about what Steven Pressfield defines as resistance. It's an internal force that acts against our desires to achieve something or make positive change in our lives. It's the invisible yet powerful barrier that prevents us from doing our work, following our dreams, or embracing change. Whoa. Did you hear that? Yeah, that was the sound of the mic dropping because that is something that everybody hits. And I talk about motivation as a big point because motivation is a checkpoint. It's a checkpoint. Yes, there's two types of motivation, intrinsic, which comes from the inside, which is what we want to build upon as big as we can. And there's extrinsic motivation, which comes from the outside. I'm going to tell you a story about extrinsic motivation and one of my biggest pet peeves about the company I work for as the Corporate Wellness Director. Every April, we have what is called a scavenger hunt. And what happens is they hide these little eggs all over campus. And people have, they give them hints on where these eggs are. And people have to go find them. And the first person that gets all the selfies, I think there's maybe 9, 10 eggs. When you get all of them, you, you get like, I think it's a 100 reward. And this competition, this scavenger hunt starts at 9 a. m. and it ends at like 12 p. m. Maybe 11. So during those hours, you have to be able to get up from your desk and go run around campus and find these eggs. But there are departments that cannot leave their desk. There are the people who are in customer service, they are talking on the phones. There's people on the warehouse who are packing products. They cannot leave their office to participate in this contest. But the ones that can, the ones that can, all you have to do is watch this contest take place and you see the ones that are extrinisically motivated They are extrinsically motivated because they are trying to get this reward. They're trying to get the recognition that doesn't last long. But what ticks me off about this contest and all the contests, actually, if you look at the contests that we have at work and we have a lot of them, they are all extrinsically motivated across the board. This does not benefit the motivation of the team. and in fact, it actually hurts the team. What would be more beneficial is to, hey, say, hey, have a contest about, Hey, tell me a story about why you work at Ooc Usoft. Why do you work here? And then when you take that story, turn it into a contest and have a team that reads these stories and picks the best one. And then at a meeting, let's talk about that story. Where did I come up with this? This is intrinsic motivation. My background is in psychology. I used to work for a company called Humetrix, that did personality tests. And also, they analyze these tests. And, when I have someone hire me as a coach, I tell them, tell me a time. About a struggle you went through and how you overcame that because what I will do is I will use that intrinsic Motivation that I see in that story and I will use it to help them when they do hit resistance Try it yourself Try it yourself. Think of a time you went through a struggle, and how did you overcome it? Journal it. Write down every detail. Write down what happened at the end of that. How it overcame it. And if you're really detailed like myself, you will get into things like your intuition. Oh Lord, I saw when my intuition was telling me move to this, do this, do this, but I didn't listen. That's what I saw. And so when I see that, that's my intrinsic motivation, because what happens when we hit resistance, we will want to find a way to overcome that. And we can look back and see. Where we had failures, because it's not if, but when you have a failure. Failure is not a mistake. It's on the way to success. For example, I recorded this video yesterday on my new camera, on everything. I couldn't edit it for shit. It would not come out. It would not come on my descript. This wasn't meant to be. I wasn't meant to be on camera and I guarantee you this one is even better. Actually, if I was forced to do this, it's never going to be perfect. But every time I get better and better and better, there's a reason for that. That's why they say when you're YouTube channel, when you're starting a podcast, it's best to get a hundred episodes under your belt so that you have the experience, you have the knowledge, you have every time it gets better and better and better. And it's not a failure. It's how you look at failure. And that's what he talks about in The War of Art and The Resistance. So here are some symptoms of resistance. Procrastination. Self doubt, those two things are very big things in resistance, but there's ways to recognize resistance and overcome them. Number one is routine and discipline. Set up your routine so that you do set yourself up for success. Don't sleep till the last minute and then stuff your breakfast down your throat and run out the door and drive crazy in traffic to get to work. No. Get up early, have a morning routine, spend time with your thoughts, spend time with your intentions for the day. This should happen daily, weekly, monthly. Set your priorities for the day the night before so that you're not stressing out. You're not procrastinating things because you think you're too busy. Of course, you're too busy because you're, you're sleeping in to the last minute and you're trying to rush everything. Positive self talk and affirmation. I like the word auto suggestion as opposed to affirmation. But positive self talk, I talk about this all the time. How you think? The first thought you think in the morning sets the tone for the day. Something great's going to happen today. That's a great thought. It's going to be a long day. That's a bad talk. That's not positive. Something great is going to happen today. And auto suggest that to yourself because when you do that, everything shifts. Physical activity and self care. These things I coach all the time. We need to get 30 minutes of movement a day. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. When you do that, you know they say sitting is the new smoking? It's true. It is. Because when we sit all day, we don't move our muscles the way they want to. We don't send those neurochemicals to our brain that say the good things. I don't believe in working out. Out every day at the gym, but I do believe in moving 30 minutes a day. And self care. What does your evening routine look like? What does your morning routine look like? Where do you insert self care into those things? That will change your day. That changes your neuropatterns in your brain. And you only need to be 1 percent better today than yesterday. That's it. And if you are 1 percent better today than yesterday, you will, it comes out to about an average at least 100 percent better in a year, rather than setting those New Year's resolutions, letting resistance hit in, and not achieving them. I'm going to start a program. A 12 day challenge starting February 1st. If you're listening to this later, I will probably have some aspect of it on my website. But this 12 day challenge is going to use the book, The War of Art. We're gonna work on resistance. We're gonna talk about exactly what resistance is. We're gonna talk about the ego. We're gonna talk about becoming professional. We're gonna talk about your intuition and how it helps you. You can get the book, you can listen to the book, you can read the book if you want to. If you don't, that's fine too. You will get plenty of tips in this challenge and yes. You can sign up for the challenge. The link will be in the description and the show notes below. But if you happen to not even look at that, it's at www.kathieowen.com/resistance I sure hope to see you there. Let's overcome resistance together. So let's continue with this episode and let's talk about the role of the ego. The definition of an ego is a part of the self that can both impede and facilitate personal growth and achievement, including the pursuit of goals, and it happens to be a critical player in the game. It influences responses to challenges and opportunities. So it presents itself as fear of failure and perfectionism. THe ego is basically major narcissism. We all have an element of narcissism in our personality, but you can use the ego for you or you can use it against you because your ego will try to shoot you down. It doesn't care. It just wants what it wants. But when we tame the ego, it shifts. And when we, we look at it from a different perspective, well, we're going to have fear of failure. And then there's also perfectionism on the other end of that spectrum. In the middle is the person who goes, Hey, I'm not afraid of failure, but I'm not going to try to be perfect. My favorite statement is remember the KISS acronym, but it's also keep everything in balance and done is better than perfect. Take this episode. It's going to be done. is not perfect because it's not exactly what I wanted, but I'm right there in the middle. My ego is not telling me, Oh, forget it. Don't do this. Or forget it because it's not perfect, or forget it because you couldn't do it. There's just, just, that's a failure right there. And number two, Ego has major confidence. And it also can take you to the other end of the spectrum, and you can think really bad things about yourself. You want to be in balance, you don't want to be big headed, but at the same time you don't want to feel bad about yourself. Again, keep it simple, silly. And then also, don't be overly confident. It's like importance in Reality Transurfing. I talk about that all the time. Reality Transurfing relates to all of this as well. And I will be incorporating those ideals into this challenge. So what do we do? We create balance through self awareness, reflection, and continuous alignment with goals, personal values, and realistic expectations. Oh, we are going to hit on this in this challenge. We want continuous alignment with our goals. We want them to be realistic. We have to incorporate our values. What do we value? I value talking to my community. Getting my message out there. Whether it's 2 people or 200 people. Or thousands of people. This is what I value. And the reason why I value that is my intuition tells me. This is what needs to get out there. Talk it. I'm not going to let resistance hold me back. I'm going to do my message. I'm going to speak my message. That's something that I value. And then I have realistic expectations. So my expectations for this video today were grandiose, but at the same time I sat back and I go, I'm going to keep it simple. I'm just going to keep it simple, silly, because if I keep it simple, These are more realistic expectations. I had a comment on my YouTube channel that said, please put your face on here because we want to see your expressions. Oh my gosh, is she ever right? Or he ever right? But I had too much on my plate. I couldn't do that. That wasn't a realistic expectation. And then I had another comment on my YouTube video that said, I'd never thought of that. I like just listening to you. Perfect. That's really what I prefer to do myself when I'm listening to my coaches and my, my things. I, I prefer to just listen to it, but at the same time I get understanding people's expressions. We all learn in different ways. And trust me, I will be on camera as soon as I figure it out. I have a realistic expectations. Let's talk about self and self awareness. There is a higher guidance tapping into this connection. It's guidance, inspiration, and strength to overcome challenges. This challenge is very little for me. It's very small, but I overcame it, and I love the mindset that I got into to overcome that challenge. To keep it simple, because I started thinking all these grandiose things about my challenge, how is it gonna work, my community's not very big, I'm probably only gonna have three people in the challenge, and I don't care if it's three or three hundred, I'm doing it. And I'm keeping it simple. I'm not putting it on my Mighty Networks. I'm keeping it in a Facebook group. I'm keeping it on my email thing. Because if I was to go off onto Mighty Networks, it's just too complicated and I would get overwhelmed. And then I would be adding all these elements. And what if I only had three people? Why would I do that to myself? When I only have three people, I will be so freaking happy. You don't even know because I'm getting my message out there and I know that combating resistance is the key to getting your goals. That to me is my intuition, my higher self, my self awareness and that's inspiration and that's motivating. And I will overcome resistance and so will you. We will push through and overcome the temptation to quit, you got that? We will overcome resistance. It gives you purpose and destiny, a deeper meaning. This gives me such a deep meaning. My in, my. Intentions for the day come from this. And I'm keeping it simple. How about you? And I'm going to learn, this is going to help us learn. And it allows you to be open to new ideas, accept failures as lessons and continuously evolve. That's what I want for you, and that's what I want for me. Talk about a win win situation. Alright, that's my episode for today. I trust that you found it helpful. If you know somebody who could benefit from this, please share it with them. And, until next time, I will see you next time. Peace out, and Namaste. Bing!