Sometimes I find myself in a story that “this shouldn’t be so hard.”
This can be anything from the mundane tasks of the work day to having a constructive conversation with other people, to the deliverables that others owe me.
The story we tell about others — What is taking them so long? This shouldn’t be so hard — is also a story we tell about ourselves to ourselves — What is going on with me today? This shouldn’t be so hard.
Judgment.
When I tell this story about a place where I am struggling, I often follow it with a voice of “encouragement.”
An inner voice reminds me that I do more complex things with ease. It points out that others are able to do the thing that I am finding hard. And if everyone else can do it, I am smart enough to do it, too.
This is the type of “encouragement” I’ve received throughout my life. But it’s actually disempowering.
My brain immediately goes into a logical sequence: if this shouldn’t be so hard, if everyone else can do it, and if I’m struggling, then there must be something wrong with me.
“This Shouldn’t Be So Hard” is Resistance
The judgment that this shouldn’t be so hard is a sneaky form of resistance, a way to escape the emotions around the stickyness of the task at hand. When we shift into judgment and victim mode instead of sitting with the feeling of the difficulty and working through it, we undermine and deny our experience.
Who says it “shouldn’t be so hard?”
What if it’s supposed to be hard?
What if the difficulty we face with a project is an opportunity to grow?
If we negate our difficulty, we deprive ourselves of this opportunity to expand our capacity.
In my practice to shift my story, when I find myself struggling with something that I believe “should” be simple or easy, I recognize this as an invitation to explore deeper beneath the surface.
[…] myth about the Resistance is that it shows up only when we have important work to […]