I talked about the emotional scale and how it’s a great way to measure growth, but those same emotions can work on a smaller scale as well. Reading your energy around a particular subject is a great way to clear up little resistances that crop up from time to time.

For example, let’s say that you’re noticing that you’re avoiding doing a certain task like calling your grandmother. You know you need to call your grandmother. You feel like there’s no reason not to call your grandmother, but you just keep avoiding it or finding other things to prioritize instead. This behavior is a good indicator of resistance. Even though you may not feel like you have a problem with it, you’re avoiding it so it’s obviously not something you want to do.

What can you do about resistance to a particular task?

1.       Feel into it

Because we’re so often disconnected from our gut/intuition, we sometimes don’t even recognize when negative feelings pop up. You may be avoiding something without feeling it and when you sit with those feelings, you realize it makes you feel not so great. It’s enough to recognize your feelings as ‘yucky’ or negative to know that there’s an issue and some resistance that needs to be dealt with.

2.       Recognize what the underlying relationship is

Where do you think those negative feelings are coming from? Do you resent having to call your grandmother out of obligation? Are you feeling anxious because of a conversation you need to have with her? Are you feeling sad because she’s not as sharp as she used to be?

It’s also important to recognize that there are relationships between you and non-human entities that exist outside of your relationships with humans. You have a relationship with money. You have a relationship with your career. You have a relationship with the concept of family. These relationships have their own energy about them and it needs to be clear for things within that relationship to work well. If you have a negative connotation of what family means, it may explain why you don’t want to call your grandmother even though you love her as an individual.

3.       Release any negative feelings

Releasing and moving through these negative feelings is obviously ideal for you to move forward without resistance. There are many ways to do this, but some of my favorites are tapping, using magnets (as outlined in The Emotion Code), or journaling on the old thoughts + feelings. Whatever your preferred method of releasing, just make sure you’re aware of the scope of the resistance and letting it all go. This may take revisiting the subject more than once if it’s a larger topic or has been well-engrained into your subconscious.

4.       Reset your relationship

The last and most important part of this is to reset the relationship to the subject/task to where you want it to be. You’ve just created space by releasing some of those negative emotions and now we want to infuse the relationship with some good stuff. Some great ways to do this are to visualize what you want things to look like moving forward, feel the feelings you’d rather feel (excitement, happiness, or appreciation maybe), or to create some affirmation about your new situation. Embodying the energy of what you want it to feel like is powerful in resetting the relationship before moving forward.

I see this happening all the time from a negative thought loop about cleaning the house to an unhealthy pattern around food + body image. When you get triggered or find one of those not so great feelings, it’s an opportunity to look at it for what it is and move past it instead of staying stuck. And the more often you do this, the easier it gets. Isn’t it worth it?