Emotional Baggage and Motivation

A Wave of Resistance

Last week I had a block of time to get some work done. Some was well defined work and some of it was creative work. I had no problem with the well defined work. My energy was good. My focus was good. I basically got the work done on time. When I moved to creative work, I basically stopped in my tracks. I could not focus. I wanted to distract myself with small meaningless tasks.

I need to emphasise that just realising this was unusual. In the past, I would have wasted my time doing meaningless tasks or ‘researching’ (reading news or blogs). I would not have realised that this was resistance. This time, I noticed it. I tried to force myself to focus, and then the resistance became a physical sensation. I could feel knots of energy in my legs, particularly in my knees.

Capture the Feeling

This time I was prepared. I captured the feeling. I noticed the feeling was mostly in my knees but extended up and down my legs. I took note of the feeling to try to remember it.

Apply the Scanning Breath

Since I had the time, I started working with the scanning breath. I focused on the feelings in my knees, and the connection to the work I was trying to do.

I did three fifteen minute ‘sets’ of scanning breath in a row. By the time I finished that the feelings had become much clearer and I was aware of more ‘feelings’ in my lower abdomen. I had no more time left and had to get on with other tasks, but I felt an incredible surge of power for these tasks.

Rinse and Repeat

I did the same work in several more sessions over the next few days. The resistance I had felt was gone and I’ve since accomplished quite a bit more than I had planned.
The repetition was particularly effective. The feeling has all but disappeared and it now takes several minutes before I can conjure up the feeling of resistance, and it is much much weaker now. It is almost completely gone.

The Results

The release of energy was a big feature of this experience. Along with the release of energy I also noticed I could think very clearly. Problems became easy to see and the solution almost presented itself to me in every case.

On the other hand, the extra energy was difficult to control and I found myself making several small mistakes typing and copying because I was moving so fast. That ended up using a lot of time to correct the mistakes. But even with that the work that I accomplished was very satisfying.