Your Resistance is Telling You Something.

A few years back I was just beginning my own intentional self-discovery?journey in my first coaching certification. Every week the cohort was together, we’d spend most of our time in pairs or trios coaching each other. Learning by doing.

I started to become aware of my resistance to certain people. I didn’t want to be paired with them. I was like a child waiting anxiously with squeezed eyes as the teacher was about to count me off with the weird kid, making us partners. Only, I was a 30-year-old woman and there really weren’t any weird people, just lessons.?

And still, I wanted to bolt! The first two times, I did. I quickly got into my pair with the person I was resisting and made sure we dispersed faster than we'd?joined. I gave little of what I had as if I were finite.

?The irony and humor are not lost on me, here.?I was in the middle of a training in which I was meant to better love and understand myself and others. And here I was reacting, not realizing how deep I was in my own stuff! Growth can be both obscure and obvious in that way.

Think about the last time you had this experience. It was probably not too long ago. We all have people come in and out of our lives that just trigger something in us. I’m not talking about people whose energy you know you must not let in?(listen to that).?

I’m talking about neural pathways in your brain. Our brain?finds cues and runs them down the same neural pathway.?It's like a speedway. It can move faster than you can blink. For whatever reason, the color of someone’s hair, the perfume they wear, or the way they say “tomato” turns you off. Well, that’s a memory (conscious or unconscious) that your brain is running down the speedway to get you an answer.

The answer is based on a pattern that?only lives in?your mind.?Oh, and by the way, the answer is ALWAYS the same. Same speedway, same exit, same answer.?

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Your speedway is like a deep and ancient groove in a stone submerged in the same waters for thousands of years. It’s smooth and decided and stuck.?But you aren’t just like a stone. You can talk and think and create. You can change in an instant. You can hold perspectives. Life can move you. If you let it, it will.

The next time I felt this wanting to bolt when I was paired up with a particular person, I decided to get curious and be open. As my friend Michelle puts it, I?stayed. I planted my feet a little deeper. I sat and I opened my heart as best as I could.

What I found when I stayed and surrendered to what was happening, was a gift. This person and I truly connected. We had an amazing coaching experience together. I saw beyond the false “answer” my mind had given me.?We laughed and cried and hugged. We found similarities.?

The mess in me actually wanted to be with the mess in this person.

?I could have missed out on that beautiful connection had I run. It’s often the unquestioned “answers” that keep us from our potential as humans.

So the next time you notice a bit of resistance, why not lean in? Ask a question. Notice something you like about that person. Get curious about their story. Do you really know what they’re all about? Would a journalist make that assumption?

What’s the worst that happens, you figure out they were precisely the person you assumed them to be? Ok. Then you put that info back on your speedway and skip to the exit.

But I bet you won’t find that. Even if it’s the smallest gift, there’s something there for you.

?Today, take a different way home.