This two part blog will provide you with tools on how to overcome resistance within yourself and with others. Resistance is all around us, every day, hour and minute people are deciding whether or not to do something, or not do something. The resistance surrounding us is internal and external. Internal resistance is the battle we have within ourselves. External resistance is the battle we have with others. Majority of the time, resistance is shown towards change, but why are people so naturally resistant?
Within the industry I work in, Civil Engineering, I experience resistance every single day and have done for the last ten years. Regardless of the project, people or politics, resistance is always present. For example, the Civil Engineering industry is known as one of the most dynamic industry as situations and environments are constantly changing. And as a leader, it is my responsibility to ensure the team, project and I, adapt to survive. However, implementing change is almost always met with resistance. The level of resistance may vary, but the resistance remains. The main reason for this due to the fear of change. But if the industry is so dynamic and always has been, why are people still so resistant to change? Because our brains are wired to be. We humans have brains which are millions of years old. Our brains are designed to protect us; you may have heard of fight, flight or freeze. Essentially, when we are subjected to change our brains automatically look to protect us. They draw on all of our experiences and look for all the bad things that can happen. We are subjected to fear, which is an emotional response. An automatic response we cannot control.
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So is there a way to overcome this automatic fear response?
The answer is yes. First we will look internally and how can deal with our own fear response. The first step is self-awareness. Now you may be thinking, what does self-awareness have to do with this? I want to know how to control my fear. Stick with me. The following method is one that I’ve used and it works.
There is an exercise I want you to do. I want you to close your eyes and recall every single time within the last seven days that you had a fear response and let your emotions control how you reacted. The result is that you may be able to remember a few big events, but have forgotten all the small events. This is because this part of our brain works subconsciously and the way to control it is to bring it to the conscious part of our brain. This is done through self-awareness.
So here’s the first tool: Recording your emotions in a journal. The first step in self-awareness is to understand where you are now. From today, and you can do this in a journal book, on your phone, voice memos, on your wall or on your laptop, I want you to record every time you feel you have an emotional response to fear. This is everything, large or small. For example, did someone want to change something at work? Did your partner change their hair? Did the train company change the train times? Record the following:
- What was your emotion?
- How did you react?
- How did that reaction make you feel?
- Did your reaction affect anyone else?
- How did your reaction make them feel?
- How did that make you feel?
This will bring your subconscious emotional response to a conscious level. And from this point you can start to control your responses. What you should also realise is that you are not the only person going through these emotions. When you receive resistant from other people, understand that they are going the exact same emotions as you are. Once you understand these points you can start to overcome resistant.
In part 2 I will explain how to overcome the challenge of uncontrollable emotions. I hope this blog brought you value. It took me years to learn this so I urge you to act and make a difference in your life and so that you don’t miss out on the rest, go the subscribe box, input your details and hit the subscribe button!
How to reference this page
- Toor, J. (2020). Deal with resistance like a pro, part one. Available at: https://pmgrowth.co/deal-with-resistance-like-a-pro,-part-one