The Dream

Sometimes I just have to force myself to sit with the resistance. There’s no getting around it. There’s no ignoring it until it goes away. It doesn’t go away until I transform it into something by sitting with it and giving it the attention it deserves.

The resistance can be for writing, reading, working out, working on a business project, playing basketball, meditation, yoga, or practicing any skill. It’s not about waiting for the perfect time when I feel like doing it. It’s about methodically putting in sets of effort day after day. It’s about forcing yourself to do it.

Because once I train myself to start and after I warm up and get the kinks out, amazing things start to happen. I get to a place that I never would have been able to if I didn’t have the resistance pushing against me.

I don’t think the pursuit of what I love is meant to always be pleasant. There are moments of darkness and pain where you want to give up. Those are the moments where the gems come from if you keep on digging.

Kobe Bryant said, “Those times when you get up early and you work hard, those times when you stay up late and you work hard, those times when you don’t feel like working, you’re too tired, you don’t want to push yourself, but you do it anyway. That is actually the dream. That’s the dream. It’s not the destination, it’s the journey. And if you guys can understand that, then what you’ll see happen is you won’t accomplish your dreams, your dreams won’t come true; something greater will.”

The dream is the struggle. And when you’re able to pull yourself through that and train yourself to see the beauty in that you get something greater than what you were originally going after.

There’s absolutely zero reason to quit. The worst case scenario is pivoting your approach because you’ve decided to alter your target to something better. The target is an illusion after all. Underneath the external target is a certain level of growth my mind, body, and spirit desire. The targets are just vehicles for the growth I am after. The pursuit and the pain are arbitrary things I’ve chosen to value to move towards or away from in my nervous system. It’s the inner work that I’m hungry for and I can stop it whenever I want but I choose not to because I have an unquenchable thirst for the beauty that comes with the struggle. It will never end. And why would I ever want it to. The purpose of life is to expand and give what you’ve received from the expansion to others.

So I must continue to become better at training myself to sit with the resistance. When it’s time to put in the reps and sets I have to set my timer and do the deep work, just like an olympic athlete or a writer. The counter balance is that I also need to have little expectations of what will happen. High standard for execution of the process combined with low attachment to what comes from it. Over time I suspect it will become something greater than I could ever imagine.

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