In this episode: I'm exploring the feeling of resistance, what it feels like when your mind and body are fighting you, and why showing up at 50% still counts for something.

I spent the weekend covered in hives and still dragged myself to a 6am power yoga class in a 99-degree room with a tweaked arm. And I did not want to be there. Not even a little.

One thing I love about yoga is that if I can just get to my mat, the practice usually flows. Well, not this time. This time I got to my mat, and even by the end of class, I still did NOT want to be there. But even feeling completely resistant, I realized that just by showing up, by taking the time, prioritizing moving my body, I was taking care of myself. And I had to remind myself that even 50% is better than never showing up at all.

This episode is a real-time process of figuring out what I'm actually resisting, how to create space when everything in you wants to shut down, and why falling in love with the effort matters more than the outcome.

If you've ever had a day where even the easy tasks felt like too much, this one's for you.

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Topics: how to push through resistance, showing up when you don't want to, mindset on hard days, self-awareness for women, personal growth podcast for ambitious women, ambition and self-care, curiosity-led living, building a life you love

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I think it's a fine line that no one can answer for you but you of the question that is what you're putting your efforts towards.

The right thing.

I think a lot of times I love the effort and putting in the effort when it's the right thing.

And I don't always love putting in the effort when it's quote unquote, the wrong thing.

But the thing is, life is never black and white.

There's never one true right or wrong answer.

So often it can feel like we're in the wrong place when maybe we're just doing the wrong piece of the work or too much.

Welcome to Becoming Obsessed, where curiosity leads you to a life you love.

I'm Teresa Stasney, and after over a.

Decade of traveling the world, working with small business owners and creating a couple of businesses of my own, I know a thing or two about playing by your own rules.

It's not always easy and it's often messy.

It can be hard, especially if you're doing it alone.

I've seen way too many incredible women shoot for the stars only to burn out along the way.

Or worse, live on default and never chase their dreams.

We're done with all of that.

Together, we're going to challenge what keeps us stuck and figure out what it takes to live a life we truly love.

Today, we're becoming obsessed with resistance.

Guys, this weekend, my entire face and chest and neck broke out in hives.

I've been dealing with that for the last few days and just feeling uncomfortable, like I don't want to do anything.

I want to sit in a hole and just be distracted.

I've made it through like three shows this weekend, which isn't how I wanted my weekend to go.

I actually had really great plans of productivity and getting work done and cleaning all my stuff.

And I did some, I actually did some, but it just wasn't what I was hoping for.

And on top of that, I'm just extremely uncomfortable.

Luckily, it's not a ton of pain, but it's just like I put my hand across my face and it feels like sandpaper.

It just makes me feel gross.

I don't like it.

But life goes on.

You keep moving.

And Monday morning, 6am, my partner and I like to go to yoga, so we booked the class Sunday.

By 6 or 7pm, I had taken some what we call Hatman juice, some Benadryl and fell asleep.

Woke up about 8.39pm, took some more meds, went to sleep for the night.

But five, 20 rolls around, I wake up And I do not want to go to yoga.

It's like I couldn't describe how I was feeling at the time.

But I hate to be charged an $8 fee for not showing up or for canceling within too short a time window.

So I get changed, go to yoga.

I'm on my mat and I don't want to be there and I don't want to have to do it.

I really, really don't want to.

And then as I'm on my mat and we're starting our sun A flows, I realize that I'm also nurturing a minor arm injury.

I hate to say injury, I tweaked it over the weekend in a common place that I tweak it and it's actually an injury that I think I got from doing yoga.

So doing more yoga just seems to tweak it even more.

So I'm on my mat.

We're in a Power Yoga 2.

The room is heated to 99 degrees.

The flows are funky and actually funky in a good way.

But not this morning.

And on my mat as I realized I don't even want to sweat because it's going to irritate my hives even more.

I can't wipe the sweat off and I can't be willy nilly.

I have to really make sure I don't use my arm wrong or tweak it wrong or is painful.

I realized what I was feeling was just resistance.

I was just resisting.

And often when I feel like I don't want to be somewhere, once I go I feel better, something shakes it loose and you're like, okay, this isn't so bad.

But I did not want to be there and I was resisting even letting go of those feelings, whatever feelings they were, of just not wanting to be perceived, not wanting to do anything that takes any ounce of thinking or hard work or effort.

That's what it is.

I don't want to do anything that takes any effort because it's that feeling when you feel sick and you're just like, I just want to lay in bed.

I don't want to use my brain, I don't want to use my body.

And it wasn't that I was so sick I couldn't, but man, I did not want to.

And I didn't want to let go of those feelings.

I was just resisting being there.

And I'll admit It is now 1:45pm and I have not shook all those feelings yet.

I still don't want to put any effort in, I'll be honest, but Even though I don't want to put any effort in, I did show up to my mat.

I did the flows.

I don't know if other people in the room would have saw me and thought I was doing it at 80% or maybe they couldn't notice that I wasn't at 100%, I don't know.

But what I realized is that the people in the class, the instructor, even my partner, he could tell that I was not in it 100%, especially when he saw the tears hitting the mat.

He really knew.

But I don't know that my instructor could tell.

And even if she could, she might have said, you know, you weren't giving it your all, but you showed up and you were hitting most the flows and you usually tap out on the chaturangas anyway.

So that was nothing new.

And here's the takeaway.

I showed up, I went to my mat, I resisted every pose, every step of the way, and I did it at least 80%.

Even with all my resistance, even just showing up and going through the motions while my brain was fighting me, my body knew what it was doing and I did it.

Maybe it was only 80%, maybe it was only 70%, but that percent adds up.

And because I did it one, I realized that even if I do things halfway, that can be better than not doing them at all.

I'll say.

Especially when it comes to working out, moving your body, but even often the work, you don't have to be 100% on 100% of the time.

And really you can't.

So let's normalize showing up even when you feel resistance to do so.

Let's normalize creating space for yourself to just feel what it needs to feel.

And the best thing about yoga and being on my mat is it creates that distraction free space where I become aware of exactly how I'm feeling.

Lets normalize feeling without judgment, we can have an awareness.

But today it was not gonna help.

I was like, why do I feel this way?

Instead, I tried this trick that people have been talking about lately.

I've heard two people mention this in the last couple weeks, that emotions only last for 45 to 90 seconds.

So when you feel it, let yourself feel it, sit in it, and it will pass in 45.

To 90 seconds.

And honestly, that comes from science.

And I believe that, but I don't believe that's the case every single time.

One of my yoga instructors has talked.

A lot about letting go.

And I love how honest she's been though she's in a class and a teacher says to let go.

She never lets go all at once in that moment.

But she'll find a muscle, a muscle group that has tension, and she'll release that muscle group.

And then maybe a few breaths later, or even a few poses, a few flows later, she'll find another spot, or maybe it's that same spot and it tensed up again and she'll release it again.

And sometimes that's what emotions are like, this feeling of resistance.

I'm resisting putting any effort in.

So find little ways to let go, little ways to move forward.

Like I said, it's now 1:43.

I'm walking and really have maybe got like 5% of the work done that I thought I could today.

I found the tasks that take low effort, so it was easier to get over the resistance hump.

And then as I felt myself burning out on even that and wanting to stop even the easy tasks, I realized it's like 67 degrees out and sunny.

So I threw a tank top on, threw my headphones on, I put on sound bath healing music, didn't even turn my tracker on.

And now I'm on a walk, doing things in the lowest amount of effort that I can muster, but doing them all the same.

And it's just letting me clear my head a little bit, or at least creating the conditions to clear my head and let whatever this is that's stuck, whatever it is that I'm resisting so hard, shake loose a little, see if I can detangle it a little bit more and let it go one breath and one step at a time and lets me realize that I'm resisting the work that I think will be hard.

And because I'm like resisting the hard work so much, I'm now resisting any type of effort at all.

And I think the only way to get over that is going to be block out time and get one piece of a project done.

One thing that I'm avoiding, that's now my next step.

I've created space to rest and recover a little bit today.

And as much as maybe I should promise and hold myself to it that I'll get it done tonight, all I can say is that I'm going to try.

I'm going to remove distractions, put on focus music, open my laptop, and work for five minutes.

Because if I can do five minutes of work, that'll probably be enough to shake out some of My hesitations and my resistance.

It's so easy to feel like I'm not trying hard enough or I'm not good enough when I have days like today.

And I think a lot of that comes from the highlight reels we see from people on social media.

Even somebody that I like absolutely adore.

She was posting about February in the last month and saying it was the perfect month.

She listed out all the things she got to do, some of them work related, speaking engagements.

And I looked at it and I said, you know what?

That's what I want.

I want to look back and say I had the perfect month.

Took to my Instagram story and said, guys, what does your perfect month look like?

And I determined that this month my priority would be fitness, moving my body, and then getting these projects that have been looming over my head done.

And I've made progress and that is what I'm going to focus on, that I've already made progress, I've done it before, I can do it again, and that it never happens all at once.

It happens step by step, one breath, one moment at a time.

The last thing I'll say about it too is even that person who said that they had their perfect month or whatever language they used, but that they had like a month that was exactly what they wanted it to be and they had such a great time.

I have to believe that they didn't feel that every single day and not every single day was easy or without resistance.

They had some hard accomplishments in there.

But what I do think, what I do believe and what I'm working towards myself is to fall in love with the process.

Fall in love with the journey, with the step and not the full distance, not with what your tracker says at the end, but how you feel during fall in love with putting in the effort.

I think it's a fine line that no one can answer for you but you of the question that is what you're putting your efforts towards, the right thing.

I think a lot of times I love the effort and putting in the effort when it's the right thing.

And I don't always love putting in the effort when it's quote unquote, the wrong thing.

But the thing is, life is never black and white.

There is never one true right or wrong answer.

And so while I feel like my life has been a little out of alignment and I'm trying to figure out what to realign, I try to use today, days like today where I'm feeling this resistance, I try to just sit in it and create space to verbalize, to process, and to figure out what pieces might be out of alignment and to figure out what part of the work I'm actually resisting.

Because so often it can feel like we're in the wrong place when maybe we're just doing the wrong piece of the work or too much too many things.

So I think I'm at the end of any grand thoughts or processing I have.

Thanks for listening.

Love you guys.

Talk soon.

Let's go get obsessed.

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Life that truly love.

All right, let's go get obsessed.