In this episode I detail the differences between knowing and doing, how to bridge that gap, and that often, what defines the gap between the two is a big serving of protective resistance. This resistance and our behaviors make so much sense when we can see they serve a purpose. Many people are coming to realize they can no longer outsource their power when its time to understand inner workings or deeper layers of your behaviors. Now is the time to move through this work in a meaningful way and make different choices for how you meet yourself when you realize there is a gap between knowing what you want to do or what you know, and what you are doing or failing to do.
To illustrate this, I personally discuss how I met myself in many situations where I knew I wanted to behave differently, but wasn’t taking action. Some of these examples include my relationship with aligned eating habits and exercise even more recently my relationship with money. Sometimes we know exactly “what” to do, but can’t seem to execute. Of course there are technical problems that we need to solve sometimes, and we need help and information to do it. Other times what we actually need is an adaptive, practical solution to our perceived issues, and we can’t outsource that to Google or Chat GPT. We need a mirror, and someone to witness and guide us in that way. More importantly, we need to meet ourselves in that place in order to effect real and lasting change.
Peeling back the layers to these things will often come up in the most mundane times of our lives once we see it for what it is. You could be taking out the trash, or loading fruit into the refrigerator when that knowing hits you -
Ah HA! What I’m really doing is preventing myself from feeling at risk for failure.
Ah HA! What I’m actually doing has served me so well for years, I'm solving all the problems without regard for my personal values because I want to be known as a “good” family member, employee, friend.
Ah HA! I’ve been setting unrealistic expectations for myself because I believe in order to be liked and valued I have to outperform myself at every turn.
Ah HA! I am feeling at risk for judgement by others so I talk negatively to myself and eat more sweet snacks even though they make me feel terrible.
These are just some examples of how this can play out - in many many many ways, remember you are special, unique and how this shows up for you may not look like the above examples but I guarantee you, if you are experiencing the gap between “knowing and doing” there is something meaningful underneath it all for you to discover.
In a conversation with my dear friend, Ardas Chandra, we discussed her decision to create paid content for Substack, if you don’t know her already, she is a wonderful creative, writer, friend, mom, just so many things! We were joking about the difference between knowing what we need to do and actually doing it. She knows the basis of my work is around protective resistance and we discuss it often. The inner protectors are often running the show in our life until we learn to understand them with new eyes, and better yet, new experiences. Her recent post really made me think about some of the areas where I was holding back in my life, and where I was experiencing the gap of knowing and doing, especially around taking action toward my goals and a particularly inspiring quote by Kevin Kelly. Check it out, you won’t be disappointed!
If any of this conversation or these concepts sparks your interest, and maybe you realize wow, you know what I thought I knew what to do but…well you frankly still haven’t done it and you want to know more, we can cover all this and more in an Inner Audit.
You bring a goal that you want to work on, and we uncover deeper layers of resistance so that you can begin to see it with new eyes. With this new foundation of understanding you are able to allow yourself to bloom in a new way, gently, understanding the environment in which you have been in for quite some time. From here, I promise you will not see things the same way. In 90 minutes, the breakthroughs I have seen my clients experience are nothings short of incredible.
In this episode I discuss concepts and teachings that I learned in the Truce Coaching Certification with Ali Shapiro. I’ve been certified in this process, and have used it to work through some of my greatest resistances over the last 7 years. This process also involves coaching feedback on my process so that I can improve how I support my clients. I’ve incorporated and adapted much of this material into my own practice and it is a basis for much of my work. I am my own best case study and my clients have experienced major shifts in life, personal understanding and business by understanding the deeper resistance (i.e. shadows) of their protective behaviors and ways.
