Wanna see how we transformed our front lawn from a time, resource and energy drain to a low maintenance, agile, perennial garden where we love to hang out with friends and neighbors?   Check out the video below!  Not only is our former lawn now an extension of our home and living space, we’ll also get fresh vegetables including lettuce, tomatoes, snap peas, and herbs.

We start renovating the front of our home after we bought it in 2001.  My very first gardening project was to install window boxes. A few years ago we lost our big oak tree and suddenly had a VERY sunny yard.  So we planted a tree (prairie fire crab apple) and then started replacing most of our lawn with garden.

This year we are initiating phase 1 of building a small patio to extend our tiny front porch.  In the video below, I show you how I’ve applied AgiliZen concepts like starting small, quick and simple to iteratively design a patio that will meet our needs AND be adaptable for the future.

We set up this “experimental prototype” patio in just a few hours using chairs, pavers and slate stepping stones we already had on hand.  This way we get to “live with it” and learn before we invest in a permanent patio. 

BEFORE

Here’s what our front yard looked like in 2002. 

2012

Here’s how the front yard with lawn converted to garden looked last April. 

NOW

Here’s the front yard garden – May 4 2013

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How do you get people to understand ADHD and how it affects your needs?

I get asked this question a lot. Here’s a few ideas to help you agilize advocating for yourself in a gracious, undemanding, yet confident way.

After being diagnosed with ADHD at the age of 48, I went through a phase of trying to get people to understand what ADHD is and sharing with them how it explained so much of my whole life story. People’s responses ranged from

• “ADHD isn’t real” to 
• “ADHD is just an excuse – it’s BS.” to 
• “You don’t have ADHD.  How could you?  You’ve accomplished so much.” to
•  ”I could have told you that. My kid has it and I’ve always figured you might have it.” to 
• “I have it too! No wonder we always got along so well” 

The reactions were quite mixed. But one thing became clear very quickly. Most people did not want to hear what I had learned about ADHD.  The bottom line is this:

Most people don’t want to understand ADHD.  And only a few really want to understand YOU in depth.  Most people only want to know precisely what you want or need from them.  

 

They want you to

• get to the point
• ask for what you need
• let them say yes or no, and then 
• accept their answer without trying to persuade them to change their mind. 

It became clear rather quickly that if I wanted people to listen to me, I had to get to the point.  People want you to clearly communicate what you NEED in specific terms rather than to try to get them to understand ADHD.  They don’t care about ADHD, they care about you and their relationship with you (hopefully.)

Even a lot of doctors simply don’t get ADHD and even they don’t want to take the time to understand your life and how it affects you.  Most people don’t want the details about your conditions, illnesses or even the reasons why you are asking them.  Better to not explain and only share details and reasons if  they ask.  

Example 1 – Being Late

If you are going to be late, or have to reschedule something, most of the time, people just want you to give them as much notice as you can and say something like:

“I’m going to be 20 minutes late.”  

and then ask them a relevant question like:

“Can you wait?”  or “Would you rather reschedule?”   

If they really want to know why, they will ask you. Most of the time, people just say “Thanks for letting me know.”   

Generally, the less you explain, the more respect and appreciation you get.  

Example 2 – Deadline Extension

“I need an extension on the deadline for ______.   Can you give me ___ days or weeks?”  

Pause and let them think about it and respond before you share any more details. Do whatever it takes to remain silent and let them think — even if you have to count to 100. 

They might just say “No problem.”  and you are done.  I was stunned when I first started practicing this that 90% of the time people have no problem with you asking for more time.  It’s the explanations (or excuses) that drive them crazy.  

Explaining Invites Judgement and Debate

When you explain it feels to people like you are asking them to approve of your reasons and / or needs. They then caught up in the details of your life and actually distracted from making a decision about whether or not they can accommodate you (e.g. give you more time, or reschedule, etc.)

Giving an explanation or justification is like inviting people to debate the validity of your needs with you. But in reality, most people in your life are not entitled to “approve” of your needs.  Your only obligation is to ASK respectfully for what you need or want – not to get their approval of the fact that you have a need or the reason why you have the need. Once you make a request, they are entitled to decide whether or not they will accommodate your need.

If they actually do feel like they are entitled to approve of your reason, wait for them to come right out and say so. But usually when people ask why, they are just being curious. In that case, give as vague an answer as you can.  Like -”something came up” or “I have a conflict.”   Make them work for details – there are very few people in life you “owe” details to. And if they are going to use your reasons to “judge” you – don’t give them ammunition. 

Once they inform you of their decision, remember that they don’t “owe” you an explanation either.  Only in a few cases, are you entitled to debate.  Generally, you are obliged to ACCEPT their answer or ASK to negotiate.     

RULE OF THUMB:  If you don’t want to get into a debate about your needs with people, ask for what you need, and then WAIT for an answer.  

Assume you are entitled to ask for what you need  – you don’t have explain why you need it.  Whether or not you have ADHD doesn’t really matter.  A need is a need – regardless of why you need it.  

But remember, whenever you ask, prepare yourself to hear either YES or NO – Don’t assume they’ll say no, but if they do, you may ask why once, but be ready to accept no for an answer or to negotiate an alternative that works for both of you.  

Just like you are entitled to ask, they are entitled to say no to your requests. 

Why do we explain?

Most of the time, we explain because we intend /  think / hope the person will be:

• more “understanding” of us (which is another way of saying we want their “approval” or “acceptance”)
• more likely to say “yes”
• less annoyed by our inconveniencing them (which implies YOU have already a) judged yourself as being annoying or b) that your job in life is to avoid ever inconveniencing other people.)

But that is not usually the result we get.  By definition, if we are explaining to “be understood” we are assuming they either won’t, or don’t, understand.  And that assumption can feel annoying to people.  Most of us can’t articulate why we get annoyed when people over-explain, but in my experience, it gets down to that in our insecurity, we somehow project to people that we don’t trust them to be generous, or accepting or understanding.  We act as though we expect people to judge us and so we explain.  In the very act of explaining, we make it almost impossible for them NOT to judge us.  

Explaining puts them in the position of “judging” your needs.  It also gives the impression that you don’t trust the person to accommodate your request just because they are considerate.  

Explaining Often Backfires – The Unintended Consequences

When you explain, it’s as if you are already sure the person will say no and are trying to make it hard for them to say no. They feel the pressure and feel manipulated. And they don’t like it.  Our intention may be to provide information they need to make an informed choice, but here’s the thing. Intentions have little (or nothing) to do with the results of our actions and behaviors.  It’s the unintended consequences that come back and kick us in the butt.  

Just because we don’t intend to be late, doesn’t mean we aren’t late, right?  Same here. We don’t intend to annoy people with our explanations, but that is what they feel. Explaining before you make a request tends to result in people regarding you as either weak, insecure and needing their approval, or as being emotionally manipulative.  It opens the door and invites them to judge you.

Is that what you really want?  If not, ask for what you need and be ready for either a yes or no answer. If they say no, depending on the situation, you can:

• accept it and suggest an alternative solution.
• ask them why
• ask them to suggest a compromise or alternative option
• thank them for their consideration. 
• consider opening up a negotiation discussion
• if their refusal is not acceptable to you, you might consider letting them know the impact of their refusal on your relationship. But be careful about this. Don’t make threats you aren’t fully prepared to carry out.  If their lack of accommodation is a dealbreaker, they need to know that.   

What about if I need an unusual accommodation for ADHD?

When asking for accommodations, find ways to ask that don’t position you as “disabled” but instead as having unique needs.

For example:

Instead of saying  ”I have ADHD so that means I need _______ .”

It’s more effective to say things like:  

“When I’m super-focused on getting something done, I work best when I get into a flow state and lose track of time. To get the best work from me, could we work it out so that I have a flexible start and end time to accommodate my creative process?  I do my very best work that way and you won’t be disappointed in the quality.”  

 

NOTE:  If timing is more critical than quality, then it’s up to you to rethink your approach.  Maybe start earlier than you normally would, or set a timer.  Either way you need to agilize a way to do what you can in the time you have and manage expectations – theirs, and most of all, your own.  Sometimes, you need to accept that you will only have time to do your “relative best” – not your VERY BEST. 

Almost every boss or client I ever asked in this way said SURE.  I want your best work, if that’s what it takes, go for it.

Another example:

  ”I do better when you put requests in writing, it gives me time to think before I say yes..I don’t want to overcommit and disappoint you, could you help me out by putting your request in an email?”  

Again, the reaction is usually “No Problem.”  In fact, they often say, “Great Idea, that will help me be clearer about what I really want, too.”

Strategies like this make it hard to argue with your request – they stick to the real point, and gain you more respect.  People admire when you factually and clearly just ask for what you need without explaining too much why you need it. 

How might you experiment with this agile way of asking for accommodations to your unique needs?   

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I’m learning and experimenting with using SlideShare!  Here’s my first contribution.

What’s covered?

• 2 ways Agile Time Management strategies differ from conventional time management strategies.
• Top 5 ways we unintentionally set ourselves up for Time Management Troubles
• 5 Keystone Time Management Habits 

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Emotional “intensity” is one of the biological traits that contribute significantly to neurodiversity, cognitive diversity, inner conflict, stress and misunderstandings in relationships. It is also a highly significant ingredient in chronic stress, chronic disorganization, chronic illness and feelings of overwhelm. 

In the article, “Intensity of Emotion Tied to Perception and Thinking” by Daniel Goleman, Michigan State University psychologist Robert Emmons explains that

“emotionally intense people seek variety, novelty, complexity. They have more varied goals in life, know more people in more different situations, and because they are doing so many different things, feel more conflict in their lives.”

”These conflicts can be a source of stress for the emotionally intense, and may explain why they report getting more minor illnesses, like colds and flus, than do less emotional people,” said Dr. Emmons.

“The new data are showing that what are considered discrete psychological disorders may, in fact, be simply the extremes of a continuum of normality.”

Want to learn more about Emotional Intensity?

BOOK REVIEW:  The book “The ADD Myth: How to Cultivate the Unique Gifts of Intense Personalities“ by Martha Burge, an ADHD coach with a BA in Psychology, is very well-written and makes what could be difficult concepts much easier to understand.

Emotional intensity is one of five intensities (based on psychologist Kazimierz Dabrowski’s groundbreaking theories of adult development) explained by Burge using the SPICE acronym.  The five intensities are:

• Sensory
• Psychomotor [energy]
• Intellectual
• Creative
• Emotional  

Differences in these intensities contribute significantly to personality diversity and each has it’s own set of challenges and strengths.  

I love her use of the “mental map” metaphor to help us understand how our mind-body-emotions filter our perceptions of the world and shape our identities.  The book is well organized and supports ease of browsing as well as in-depth reading (though in my Kindle version there aren’t many visuals.)  

The practical ideas she provides for both reducing and coping with the stress that may accompany these traits include many that I have implemented in my own life to reduce stress and heal PTSD. For example:

• Plan recuperation time following busy events. [I build in at least 2 transition days with minimal or no appointments etc. before and after a vacation or other major event.]
• Get rid of clothes that aren’t comfortable.  [I remove all labels from clothing and only wear smooth fabrics that don't irritate my sensitive skin.]
• Use sound-blocking headphones when in loud places like an airplane or subway. [I carry earplugs with me everywhere I go and sleep with them as well.]

She also provides highly practical suggestions for harnessing and cultivating the strengths of our intensities so that we can experience the potential advantages that are enabled by intensities.  For example:

“The intense brain has to be busy. Boredom is the ultimate enemy. This is impossible to explain to a nonintense person. Boredom is torture. When bored, even some pretty stupid things start to look like good ideas.”

Instead of “boredom” I would call this insufficient engagement, stagnation, or lack of change. To me boredom is when I can’t think of something to do – which almost never happens to me.  But I do experience a kind of physical pain or discomfort when things stay the same for too long or don’t require me to engage fully because they are too repetitive, easy, or just too passive or not multi-sensory. For example, I can feel this even when reading an interesting book.  If I don’t engage my body while reading, my attention will wander and it can feel physically painful.  So I take notes, often just to help me pay attention, the note-taking is for me like having a conversation with the author, it’s not always so that I can refer to the notes later.  In general I find that full engagement is more of the issue than whether or not I’m interested.   I believe what I think of as full engagement is what Ms. Burge is describing when she discusses practices for becoming “fully present” such as contemplation, mindfulness and immersion. 

I actually rarely feel bored, but I often feel that “torture-like” feeling that comes from being only partially engaged, quiet, slow or inactive on a daily basis.  Instead of feeling tortured and helpless and reacting in ways I regret later, I have designed productive ways to respond to that feeling. I have learned how to enhance my own sensory engagement using my environment to influence what I pay attention to and to avoid overloading my senses.  For example, I find that I can create the “freshness” I need by changing simple things like:

• decluttering a drawer
• changing the colors of something
• painting a wall 
• rearranging furniture or display items 
• swapping out the dishes I use daily (I have a red and a white set that I can alternate)
• deep cleaning
• gardening

Sometimes, just changing the color pens I’m using or what’s hanging on the wall is enough to satisfy this need.  What I’ve found is that there are lots of ways to incorporate the inspiration that comes with variety and novelty without being drastic or as disruptive as say, buying all new furniture – just rearranging it is usually enough.

It’s unfortunate that she named the book “The ADD Myth”  because the subtitle is a much more accurate description of the book’s content.  Most of the book is actually a guide to living with the five SPICE intensities.  The “The ADD Myth” title makes it seem like the whole book will be about debunking the diagnosis of ADHD when in fact it’s mainly the first chapter.  

The ADHD chapter is highly controversial and thought provoking and I completely concur with the foreword by Dr. Allen who was one of the writers of the criteria in the current DSM. The ADHD section could have made a great appendix rather than the lead story.  Overall the book is constructive, optimistic, inspiring AND practical.  I highly recommend it for anyone is an intense person or lives with one. 

REFERENCES and RESOURCES

ARTICLE: Daniel Goleman,  “Intensity of Emotion Tied to Perception and Thinking“

BOOK: Martha Burge, “The ADD Myth: How to Cultivate the Unique Gifts of Intense Personalities“ 

Other Books I recommend for Cultivating Emotional Intelligence

The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion: Freein…  by Christopher K. Germer PhD	Self-Compassion: Stop Beating Yourself Up a…  by Kristin Neff	The Brain and Emotional Intelligence: New I…  by Daniel Goleman
The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who Yo…  by Brene Brown	Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulne…  by Brene Brown	Emotional Intelligence: 10th Anniversary Ed…  by Daniel Goleman
Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life Wit…  by Tara Brach	Men, Women, and Worthiness: The Experience …  by Brene Brown PhD LMSW	Dabrowski’s Theory of Positive Disintegration  by Sal Mendaglio

ADDITIONAL ARTICLES BY ARIANE BENEFIT 

• Is it ADD or Creative Personality Type?
   
• Rethinking SMART Goals – Agile Goal Setting 

• 5 Steps to Cultivating the Power of Habit 
   
• Handling Emotional Overwhelm the AgiliZen Way
  
  
• On Resistance and the Art of War
   
• The Truth about Chronic Disorganization  

   

• Chronic Procrastination: How we Learn to Procrastinate.

INDEX OF MY “BEST OF” Articles here

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The SMART Goal Setting acronym has been around a long time.  I first learned it in 1981 when I was in graduate school studying adult learning psychology. As part of the AgiliZen framework, I’m proposing an updated more sustainable way of thinking about SMART goals that fits the more improvisational lifestyle most of us creative, growth-oriented people need.

Achieving goals doesn’t have to feel like pressure, overwhelm and stress.  

What would your life be like if you insisted that your goals serve you in BOTH getting things done AND enjoying life every day? 

Enjoying life should not be the  “prize you earn” for accomplishment. Enjoying life in all it’s messy unpredictability is what gives you the drive to wake up every day, make meaning out of your messes, and go for what you want out of life even when progress is slow or on a temporary hiatus.

While deeply thinking about goals through the Agile lens, and thinking about how goals should serve us not intimidate us, I came up with this updated acronym for SMART goals. SMART agile goals are designed to inspire and empower us to agilize our priorities into reality and enjoy life too.   I hope you find it useful to at least consider this alternative way of setting goals. 

S  Small, specific and sustainable

Agile goals fit your lifestyle and are small enough to integrate into your life without overwhelming you or your resources.

M  Meaningful and memorable

Agile goals contribute to an emergent outcome goal such as “Improve my health” in a way that you can act on daily. Agile goals are connected to clear purpose, are brief and simple enough to remember, and are easy to set up reminders for if needed.

A  Aims for the agile zone

Agile goals support optimal functioning in a variety of less than ideal future scenarios. Agile standards are flexible.  The process of acting on agile goals is attractive in both short and long-term  because they allow for creativity, learning, intrigue and inspiration. Instead of trying to make things turn out a certain way, we get to wonder how the solutions in their final form will evolve to ensure the important needs that inspired the goals are met.

R   Relevant to emergent outcome goals and to satisfying multiple needs simultaneously (e.g. sensory, emotional, mental, creative, practical and functional needs)

Agile goals are connected to satisfying needs on multiple levels simultaneously.  They reflect thoughtful consideration and integration of your unique personal and lifestyle needs.  Agile goals resolve conflicts between competing needs such as need for quality nutritional food on a low budget without completely sacrificing one for the other. Agile goals meet needs for both immediate gratification (enjoying your life now) and attaining the emergent outcome rewards in the long-term.

T   Tweakable

Agile goals are open-ended enough to empower you to meet them in a number of ways.  Rather than dictate the solution, they guide you in designing and improvising your solutions. Agile goals allow you to tweak them on the fly, as needed, when resource constraints, such as time, energy and money available fluctuate and STILL WIN.

Tweakable agile goals not only allow, they EXPECT you to easily adapt any part of the process or outcome to meet the current conditions.  The way the goal is stated allows you many possible ways to satisfy the real needs while also continuously improving or modifying the process, tools, timing, ingredients, etc to make the solution more interesting, satisfying and sustainable.    

 Take the Taste Test
 AgiliZen SMART Goals Compared to Conventional Goals

Below is an emergent outcome.  It can only be achieved by integrating small daily habits that add up to this. 

Learn to enjoy the process of cooking highly nutritious whole foods by designing small changes into the way I cook so that cooking feels easy, creative and spontaneous.

SMART agile goals might look like this:

• I will discover simple, versatile tools to cook with and only keep the ones that meet multiple needs: my sensory needs for color, look and feel, AND my functional needs for are easy to use, clean, store in my small kitchen with limited storage. (e.g. a great multi-purpose cutting knife that fits my hand, feels good when using it, fits my color scheme and makes it kinda fun to cut up vegetables, etc.)
   
• I will learn about and experiment with one or 2 new flavors or fresh ingredients each month or so I can learn more about whole foods and seasonings that make eating and cooking more of a creative adventure I look forward to than a chore.
   
• I will design or discover 2 – 3  go to “template” recipes for dinner that include only 3 – 5 healthy ingredients  - are easy to remember, easy to adapt to whatever ingredients I have on hand, and easy to prepare even when I get home tired at night. 
   
• I will figure out a core set of healthy ingredients to keep stocked in my pantry, fridge and freezer so that I can improvise convenient healthy meals anytime.

Conventional Goals might look like this:

• I will cook my own meals at least 3 times a week to save money on eating in restaurants and to eat healthier.  
• I will weigh, measure and write down everything I eat.
• I will plan my meals for the week and make a detailed shopping list to ensure I have all the ingredients I need to make each meal.

Can you feel the difference between the agile goals and the conventional goals?

Which kind of goals are more likely to captivate your interest and inspire you into action?

If you were born to agilize, chances are the conventional approach SMART goals will not inspire you to easily achieve long-term success. You might make a change for a couple weeks then find yourself inexplicably just stopping.  Not achieving your goal feels bad enough, but it is not a benign fleeting kind of pain.  The dark side of repeatedly using goal setting strategies that don’t fit you is that the stress actively and cumulatively does HARM to your self-image and to your emotional, mental and physical well-being.

The stress of repeatedly feeling like a failure actually harms your overall health and well-being so that is progressively becomes HARDER to achieve the outcome goals you deeply desire.   

Repeated lack of success has many undesirable side effects and consequences, such as making you feel inadequate, defective or like a failure.  It can lead to anxiety, depression, and set you up for chronic feelings of overwhelm, chronic disorganization, clutter, chronic procrastination and resisting your own goals.  

The agile way of goal setting accepts you as you are.    Rather than relying on self-control, encourages self-understanding and self-leadership to design goals in a way that nurtures your spirit and organically inspires you to achieve beyond what you can even imagine right now.   Using control tactics is not “required” to inspire yourself to do things that are good for you – there are other ways!   

When it comes to meeting human needs, there is always an alternative way to get things done that doesn’t require strong self-control.  The AgiliZen way considers control as an option best reserved for machines and should be used sparingly with human beings.

Outliers who are growth-oriented, creative, non-linear, intuitive thinkers and who love to learn and explore more than the average person does, need goals that are designed to be adaptable, flexible and agile.  As you learn, grow and evolve, your needs, interests, and resources change more frequently than the average person’s.

Agile goals nurture, respect and accommodate the intensity of your drive to learn and grow.  Agile goals are designed to easily change as you learn – without the drama of being made to feel like you failed to achieve or abandoned yet another goal.  

The greatest wisdom and achievements are made possible by the “stepping stones” of  those goals you “tried on” and let go of and the course corrections you made along the way as you learned.  The agile S.M.A.R.T goal setting process works with your natural adaptability and cultivates it into a strength.  

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I appeared on ADHD Support Talk Radio,  Feb. 7, 2013 discussing the agile way of dealing with and preventing emotional overwhelm.  

Highlights

• The role of emotions in cultivating performance and productivity
• Cultivating emotional resilience and intelligence is a high impact productivity strategy for everyone and particularly for creatives, HSP (Highly Sensitive People), ADHD, Gifted Adults, and other neurodiverse individuals. 
• How your personal metaphors affect your emotional life and how you handle conflict.
• Common metaphors that affect what you perceive is normal, acceptable, or disordered.  
• The car and plane metaphors for different personality and productivity styles. 
• Why some people are natural prioritizers and some are natural agilizers.
• Why having special talents makes a lot of things in life easier and also makes a lot of things harder. 
• Comparing self-control and need-responsive as diverse styles – the agile way values both styles
• Recognizing the biases that affect our ability to accept ourselves, value our differences with each other, and ultimately make it more difficult to cultivate emotional resilience
• The potential value of conflict (opposites attract)
• Alternatives to the “Time is Money” metaphor that leads to overwhelm and high stress
• The concepts of “relative best” and “template automation” as flexible, agile optimization strategies 
• How we learn to become “control freaks” even though it’s not our innate nature
• The agile way of using your calendar
• How we can easily strengthen multiple abilities such as: mindsight, mindfulness, and ability to pay attention and mediate inner conflict using just one or two of the activities you are already doing.  

FREE DOWNLOAD

LISTEN TO REPLAY  BELOW 

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I don’t usually write about what I disagree with, but I think it’s time for me to express my opposition to cultural metaphors and myths that feed the growing epidemic of stress, anxiety, powerlessness, and feelings of inadequacy that so many people are experiencing today.

What better place to start resisting than with a best-selling book that has 309 5-star reviews and declares something as untrue as  ”Resistance is Evil?” 

If resistance is characterized as evil…no wonder our culture destroys the confidence and self-respect of anyone who dares to be different, express dissenting ideas, or disagree with dominant values.  

Today, I’ve decided to resist openly and honestly.  I’m not going to be “nice” or “quiet” just to not make waves.  Our cultural obsession with the idea that self-control and battling one’s inner resistance is the only way to “break through” procrastination or creative blocks must be challenged.  

My intention is not to simply criticize by attacking his ideas.  I hope to inspire deeper thinking on the claim that “resistance is evil” and encourage people to ask questions of their own before accepting the ideas as truth.  So along with my resistance, I offer an alternative.

I believe resistance is more effective when served constructively.  It’s not enough to point out what isn’t fully accurate. Thoughtful resistance that has any hope of being well-received by the force being resisted needs to offer a creative and sustainable alternative as well.

Here’s my attempt at that.  Hope you find it helpful.

The content of the book “The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles” makes it abundantly clear that the author did little to actively resist or challenge his own ideas while writing it. From the first page, Steven Pressfield makes one outrageous and inaccurate claim after another.  

Was he trying to shock people?  If shock was the intention, I suppose I could understand it.  But from the tone of the whole book, it seemed to me he really believes what he is saying and truly cannot see an alternative way to look at inner resistance.

So, if he reads this, I hope he takes it in the spirit offered and is willing to consider that a metaphor other than WAR might apply to the inner conflict he and so many others experience when trying to write or create art of any kind. 

QUOTES FROM THE BOOK:

— “Resistance is the most toxic force on the planet. It is the root of more unhappiness than poverty, disease, and erectile dysfunction.” 
 

— “Resistance is evil.” 
 

— “Resistance is the enemy within.”

These quotes are so utterly and completely misguided, I can hardly believe this book got published. Unfortunately they are the premises upon which the entire book is written.

ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF RESISTANCE

Here are several other ways to look at resistance. And yes, you can quote me.  To my knowledge I have not read or heard anyone else say these exact quotes. 

— Resistance IS NOT inherently evil. Resistance is VALUABLE.  Resistance is our GIFT.  It’s the source of our Free will. Without resistance we would all be obedient little robots. 

— Resistance is a vital component of your ability to think for yourself.   Inner resistance is what enables you to challenge YOUR OWN thoughts and ideas and not believe every thought you think.

— Inner Resistance makes courage possible. Without it, you would not be able to feel fear and act anyway.

— Resistance helps prevent you from automatically believing everything you hear or see. 

— Resistance prevents you from automatically following every order or command you are given. Even the ones you give yourself. 

— Resistance is often trying to PROTECT and defend your rights, not HURT you. 

— Resistance is REQUIRED to develop your ability to think both creatively and critically. 

— Inner Resistance may seem evil, but in fact, is often coming from our inner wisdom trying to get our attention nonverbally to let us know that we are not yet ready to do the thing we are intending to do.  It has the potential to give us useful information if we listen and not immediately jump into war with it. It is often NOT our “enemy within.” 

 

THE POTENTIAL VALUE OF RESISTANCE

When we listen more deeply, resistance (even when it comes to writing or any other creative task we want to perform) can be felt and heard as the voice of our inner wisdom challenging and encouraging us to:

1. Become less rigid in our idea of what we think we have to do to become a good writer or whatever you are trying to get yourself to do. Creative work is challenging and can be an opportunity to learn more about ourselves and become more flexible and agile in all aspect of our lives.
    
2. Use our inner creativity to DESIGN ways to inspire ourselves to write and to increase the quality of our ideas.
    
3. Try listening to our inner wisdom instead of assuming our logical self is always right. The part of our brain that sets goals and tries to “tell” us what to do is not always right. Our inner controlling self is not inherently superior to our emotional and physical selves.

Writing is a process. If Steven Pressfield wrote this book by forcing himself to sit down and start writing at 9 am every day – well, no wonder it is so biased, oversimplistic and promotes strategies that not only may not be helpful, they could be downright oppressive to the creative soul.   

Good writing requires doing much more than sitting down at a computer at 9 am every day. Good writing requires a healthy combination of: 

• Nurturing your ideas 
• Thinking and experimenting and trying out your ideas.  Do they hold up when you put them into practice?  

• Challenging your ideas
• Reading and listening to other people’s ideas on the same topic. Particularly reading ideas that are contrary to your own. 
   
• Listening to “resistance” to your ideas. 
   
• Actively considering the possibility that ideas that are completely opposite of yours might have some seeds of validity that could ENRICH your point of view.

Resistance challenges us to think deeper, and use our reasoning and discerning skills before we accept other people’s ideas and adopt their suggestions. Resistance enables us to filter out ideas that either aren’t true or simply don’t fit us. Without resistance, we become easy targets for any claim that simply “feels right” or “sounds good.”  Willingness to resist and get past our comfort zone empowers us to challenge outdated cultural myths and metaphors no matter how intuitively right they seem.

Most Inner Resistance is worth listening to. If you listen and respond respectfully it often melts and may even evolve into an ally.  It may give you information that can greatly improve your strategies. Resistance is uncomfortable, but war is not usually the most effective response to resistance.  In fact, the most honest feedback and resistance often comes from the people who are closest to us and love us the MOST.  If they didn’t care, why would they bother to risk giving us their honest feedback?  

The same is true of our inner resistance.  If you look and listen deeper, your inner resistance could be your best friend.  It could be the most honest source of feedback you have to challenge you to question your assumptions, redesign your strategies, or rethink your own ideas.  What if you could not only SUCCEED but ALSO enjoy the creative process in all its mysteries and unpredictability?  What if you could nurture it and NOT have to FORCE or BATTLE or CONQUER yourself at every turn?  

What if your resistance holds the keys to creative bliss and you can’t get there because you are too busy fighting it?

The more you fight resistance, the more it goes underground and becomes even stronger.

— Resistance is what fueled the American Revolution. If England had LISTENED and allowed us to have a voice in our own taxation, we might still be part of England. 

— Resistance is how we respond to disrespect and tyranny – even when we are disrespecting ourselves.

— Resistance is how we respond to abuse – and trying to force ourselves to do things can become a form of self-abuse.

Clearly, Steven Pressfield’s military background not only taught him to devalue his inner resistance, it seems to have weakened his ability to see life with any metaphor other than war.  It seems to have robbed him of his ability to embrace the gifts of resistance.

I hope that somehow he finds a way to see inner resistance as a healthy part of developing the miracle we humans have of being able to learn, change, and grow as a result of conflict, tension, and struggle.  Our “opposable mind”  separates us from animals and makes it possible to resist ourselves and change our own behavior rather than simply follow built in “instincts”.  Resistance is a central ingredient to the ability to learn. Our ability to resist what we have learned so that we can UNLEARN untruths is one of the most wondrous aspects of being human.

ALTERNATIVE METAPHORS FOR ART

When you take the time to consider the potential value of resistance and to ask the question, is war REALLY the best or only metaphor for art?  You open your mind to see that the process of creating art does NOT have to be war.  It can be so much more satisfying and enriching than that.

— Art can be a “dance” with life and the “gardening” of high quality ideas. 

— Art can be an adventure in getting to know ourselves and cultivating self-respect, self-confidence, and humility. 

— Art can teach us self-leadership, conflict resolution and inner consensus-building. 

— Art can challenge and inspire us to cultivate inner alignment instead of trying to dominate ourselves.

WAR IS THE REAL SELF-DEFEATING STRATEGY

Who is winning when you go to war with yourself?  Who loses?  Both sides ARE YOU!  When you “defeat” one part of yourself…that is the REAL act of self-sabotage. Thinking you having an enemy inside is a recipe for depression, anxiety, frustration, and wasting ridiculous amounts of energy fighting that could have been spent listening and learning.

Steven, if you read this piece of resistance to the ideas in your book, I wonder:  Would you even consider rethinking the war metaphor for art?  or would you actively consider the possibly of another way to experience the process of creation?

____________________________

I wonder if the people who love the book would read this or be inspired to consider new possibilities?  If you were like me and felt something was “off” and felt outnumbered by the vast outpouring of people agreeing with and praising the war metaphor, I hope reading this helps you strengthen your own point of view and conviction to think for yourself – even when it seems like an overwhelming majority disagrees with you.  If you feel more empowered to keep listening to yourself,it was worth taking 4 hours out of my life to write this. 

RELATED POSTS

• Agilizing, Resistance and the Art of War 
• Chronic Procrastination and Resistance: How we Learn to Procrastinate
• Organize Your Time: Agile Time Management Strategies – VIDEO EXCERPT 
• The 8 Habits of Agility – Foundations for Agile Life Design and Productivity

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As I am preparing to start a new chapter of my life, I’m reviewing my past body of work little by little.  What is still relevant and worthy of moving on with me?  What can I delete and let go?  

I’m reposting this article i originally wrote 5 years ago because it’s worthy of being part of my current website.  I now see that I was, even then, writing about how I became adept and agile with changing my thinking habits i this case, it was so that I could release clutter with ease.  My things no longer have such power over me, I keep only what I need, use, and care about.  

I find it quite interesting how much I’ve evolved since writing this, and yet, how much the heart of my message is the same. This was one of my most widely read and linked to articles of that year.  I hope you find it valuable in finding your inner peace by resolving any power struggles, traumatized attachments or indecision about the things taking up space in your heart, mind, home and office spaces.   

Things I had to UnLearn so I could Let Go of My Clutter

by Ariane Benefit, M.S.Ed. Life Coach, ADHD Coach, Organizing Coach, Author 
Chronic Disorganization Specialist, ADD / ADHD Coach 

Like many of you reading this, I have had a tendency to hold on to things long past their useful life as far back as I can remember.  Especially sentimental things, books, clothes, furniture, gadgets and paper.  Okay, pretty much everything.  When I was 30 years old, I still had most (95%) of the clothes I had ever owned and I had over 1000 books.  Out of an un-questioned need to document my life, I was accumulating photo albums and souvenirs at an alarming rate. I had outgrown all my storage and was using any available surfaces and spaces to hold it all. In my journey to let go of the massive clutter I’d collected I had to “unlearn” lots of habits and beliefs that caused me so much stress and anxiety. 

Here are a few beliefs I had to unlearn [2102 Note:  I now call this "relinquishing or updating default settings] so that I could experience the freedom of living with less stuff – or better yet, just enough stuff to function with ease.

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 Organize Your Time: Agile Time Management Strategies for Thriving in the Age of Perpetual Beta –  Part of the “Organize Your Life” Webinar Series 

If getting organized is one of your new year’s intentions, join me and other experts  including Judith Kohlberg, Ramona Creel, Elizabeth Hagan, Allison Carter and more!  Allison organizes this annual event to celebrate Get Organized month with a series of high quality learning experiences to help you focus, plan, and organize your time, space, and information. CEU credits are available for professional organizers. 

 This class is over.  Here’s a Video Clip from the class.

WHEN
Thursday, January 17, 2013
7:00 PM Eastern
4:00 PM Pacific

INCLUDES Downloadable MP3 and PDF of slides so if you can’t attend live you can still attend!

REGISTRATION IS CLOSED 

Session Description:  Organizing Your Time – The AgiliZen Way
Welcome to life in perpetual beta. There’s almost no time to plan. Nothing seems to follow the plan even if you do have one. Conventional time management strategies are inadequate to the challenges of the digital age.

Agile Time Management™ offers a whole new organic approach to juggling the 8 Dances of Life™ that works for creatives, ADHD, gifted, neurodiverse and anyone who desires a simpler, more enjoyable and flexible way to organize their lives.

Join me and discover:

• The benefits of the Agile way of orchestrating the 8 Dances of Life™
• Your time management style and how it affects the way you get things done
• How to design Agile goals that inspire you
• How to cultivate habits that reduce stress and overwhelm
• Powerful Mantras to inspire putting Agile into Action

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My holiday gift to you!   

Designing Stress Out of Your Holidays
Presented October 18, 2012
Hosted by Michelle Barone for her “Finding Your Way” Home Schooling Community

Note: We talk a little about homeschooling in the beginning but then the rest of the class is relevant to everyone and particularly to parents of neurodiverse kids.  Hope you find something helpful in this for you! 

Highlights of Topics Covered

• Hidden Sources of Holiday Stress
• Dealing with Stress and Anxiety Triggers
• Tips for simplifying gift-giving, card sending
• Managing expectations
• Setting boundaries gracefully
• Designing disappointment out of the way we make plans
• Helping ADHD, Asperger’s, Neurodiverse Kids reduce stress
• Negotiating happy compromises to get the rewards of both being spontaneous and planning ahead

Would love to hear your favorite tips from this class – just post a comment below. Thank you!  

• Which of these tips might you try this year?  
• How are you reducing stress and simplifying your holidays this year?

ARTICLE: Get my  holiday organizing tips in writing!

20 Neat & Simple ways to Simplify Holiday Decorating,
Gift Giving, Card Sending, and Entertaining

  Listen & View the Slides online – Free.  

Related Articles from my Neat & Simple Living Blog

• Simplifying the Holidays
• Clutter-free Holiday Gift Ideas!
• Checklist to Simplify Sending Holiday Cards

  MORE RESOURCES YOU MIGHT LIKE

Organize Your Time: Agile Time Management™  Unconventional Strategies for Thriving in the Age of Perpetual Beta

GET DETAILS + REGISTER HERE

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