Overcoming Resistance and Friction, the Boulder to our North Star.

Anyone wanting to create a future divergent from the status quo, tasked with setting a vision, standing out in front and saying “follow me” or looking inside themselves to become someone better than they currently are should empathise with the challenges faced by the boulder pushing Sisyphus and his continuous struggle against the sinews of his muscles and mind.

Punished by the gods, day in day out Sisyphus’s endeavour was compounded by resistance and friction; he gave his whole everyday only to face the same struggle tomorrow. In each moment he had to look inside of himself and find the strength to overcome his daily burden and at the same time face the impediments on the path ahead. Pushing his boulder over, through or around barriers as he encountered them. Resistance and Friction.

Like Sisyphus we spend our lives in tight loops, following the same routines week by week, day by day.

What is Resistance?

Resistance is that insidious entropic force that holds us back from our potential. The subconscious that destroys our intent, the creator of procrastination and the nemesis of change.

According to Robert Fritz there exists within each of us a “dominant belief that we are not able to fulfil our desires”. From our earliest days we are led to believe that success is the sole pursuit of those preordained to achieve it. Some are born in the light for the light, others in the dark destined for a life of unfulfilled desires, mere observers, jealous of what could be and frustrated by what is.

We dream of a future we want but allow our subconscious to prohibit progress towards it, the goal seemingly insurmountable destroyed by the thoughts of future boulders, each a friction yet encountered to vision.

Resistance is forgetting or not knowing that we are troubled more by our thoughts of the future than our experience of it as we exist within it. The next time you set out to do something and feel the rise of uncertainty, be sure that resistance is about to surface it’s head.

Time is entropy and the further our thoughts look ahead the greater the opposing effort must be to prevail against the traversal to chaos and overcome the thoughts of resistance that stop the journey from beginning.

What is Friction?

The phenomena of friction is best described as:

“Countless minor incidents … the kind you can never really foresee … combine to lower the general level of performance, so that one always falls short of the intended goal”

Clauschwitz, On War

In essence friction is experienced resistance, the realisation of those future fears and of incidents not yet visualised. Generally speaking breaking through friction is far less challenging than resistance would have us believe.

We suffer the compounding jabs of friction as we navigate uncertainty causing emotional frustration to build as our North Star seems unreachable, a fading light shimmering into the distance.

The tension that builds convinces us that it would be easier to move the star closer to us rather than continue along the path to it. The cumulative effect of friction is goal erosion, we surrender our ambitions because of depleted will power spent on friction.

As we embark on any journey, any transformation we have to consider the value of the journey itself, the justification for taking on friction. Would Sisyphus have moved his mountain top if he could of avoided the struggle and simply leaned an elbow on his rock?

Endure and Renounce

We need to learn to recognise resistance as we experience it. As the Roman Emperor, Marcus Aurelius said:

“Our actions may be impeded … but there can be no impeding our intentions or our dispositions. Because we can accommodate and adapt. The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting. The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

The lived delta between the status quo and the True North of our personal narrative is creative tension. Resistance is the force that stops us from releasing creative tension, our anxiety acts as a compass giving us the direction if not the means to traverse that space, to identify the impediment to action, our debilitating fears.

The longer we hold this state, existing out of sync with where we want to be the greater the build up of emotional frustration.

Resistance creates a barrier to releasing this frustration and we can either accept things as they are, giving in to resistance by throwing a lasso around our Star and pulling it in closer to us or renounce our fears by embarking on a journey into friction. The more friction you endure the less emotional frustration you will experience, the less giving into resistance will be a force of habit in your life.

You can create a virtuous cycle by enduring friction on the vector to what is good and renouncing what is bad, resistance.

Break Through

“We’ll only really work to change ourselves if we have a motive, an emotional push to change ourselves, and this emotional push will probably come from some sort of crisis in our life and our relationships, and from our emotions telling us that something is deeply wrong with our present life trajectory.”

Jules Evans, Philosophy for Life

By becoming self-aware we can create a tipping point, we can feel where the points of greatest leverage are to break through self-imposed constraints.

Creating the change needed to improve takes courage and will power. Not the kind of courage to overcome our adversaries but the courage to overcome our adversities. Change creates character through habit and character crafted by habit can become the defining principle of our future. What we do and what we think will mould who we are, how we achieve depends very much on the depth of reserves in our reservoir of will power.

“Beneath all human theories and values yawns an abyss of nothingness, and this nothingness means that what counts is not reason or logic, but power and faith. We have to assert ourselves as creations of pure will in a meaningless universe.”

Jules Evans, Philosophy for Life

Will power is finite and steered by the principles of our character. Where will power is brute force originating from the mind and soul; character is the continuous assertion of lived values and key in achieving the self-sufficiency necessary to navigate the complex fog of war. Without character will power cares little for what it leaves in its wake.

Look Out For Dragons

“people hooked on will power may look for obstacles to overcome, dragons to slay, and enemies to vanquish — to remind themselves and others of their own prowess”

Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline

The anxiety associated with creative tension can become habit in its own right, creating a nervous, short fused and reactive character. Instead when using the compass of creative tension accept that the events of friction are outside of your control and look to navigate the uncertainty with moral rather than emotional strength.

The key to a good life, to navigating uncertainty is not fixating on the North Star but finding tranquility, equanimity on the vector towards it.

As Albert Camus said:

“I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one’s burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

Live Your Vector

Do not dream of writing a book, find joy in writing a page. Do not dream of running a marathon find purpose in early morning runs. Seek satisfaction from flow, deep work found in the process rather than the outcome. Here Sisyphus’s mountain of despair was equally his rock of hope, he found purpose in his struggle and through daily determination strengthened his character. The gods did not curse him, they blessed him, for they pointed him back inside of himself, they gave him the opportunity to find his meaning.

If we take a moment to stare up into the night sky and consider the permanence of the stars, the enormity and longevity of the universe. It is only in our arrogance that we can see our challenges as anything but insignificant against the vastness of time and space. Those stars weren’t hung for our appreciation, we are destined to stay mere observers of their twinkle. Unable to affect their shine through anything other than our own perception but through will, character and courage we can rewrite the hanging of our own stars. Face off into resistance, navigate through complexities friction and in each moment find equanimity in our journey.

If we choose to look we will find that the struggle is enough.