A Little Trick

I've been using this little trick to get creative work done. When I start to feel resistance, strong resistance to doing something, I immediately go do it. So yesterday, when I started to really resist sitting down to write, I just picked up a pen and sat down.

I had avoided writing for a day or two because it had become downright unpleasant. I was writing every day but it just felt bloodless, perfunctory. I wasn't enjoying it at all. It was like a chore to plow through a writing exercise and I thought, "Great. All the pleasure of writing is gone, disappeared, poof and I will never feel it again. This is what writing will be for me, this plodding, going through the motions, day after day after day."

And then yesterday I started to resist and then sat down and wrote and all the glorious pleasure came flooding back like a long lost lover, and I wrote and wrote, almost crying with relief.

I've noticed this before, how something has to reach critical mass, a kind of tipping point of frustration and failure and then it tips ever so slightly, something clicks into place and things start working again.

So from now on, this is what I'm going to do: I am going to acknowledge the resistance and then get down to it. I'm going to have faith in the tipping point.

And this morning, when my calves felt sore and tight and I tried ten ways to sunday to talk myself out of going for a run, I just laced up my shoes and ran and I'll be damned if it wasn't the best run I've had in weeks.