Five For Your Hive: Overcoming The Resistance

Overcoming The Resistance, Joel Embiid, Only By Actual Practice, Hugh Howey, Theodore Roosevelt

Overcoming The Resistance

In The War of Art, author Steven Pressfield talks about the Resistance. “Resistance,” Pressfield writes, “is an indicator—It tells us what we have to do.” Often, the Resistance masquerades as fear; “The degree of fear equates to the strength of resistance.” “Therefore,” Pressfield declares, “the more fear we feel about a specific enterprise, the more certain we can be that that enterprise is important to us and to the growth of our soul. That is why we feel so much Resistance. If it meant nothing to us, there’d be no Resistance…so if you’re paralysed with fear, it’s a good sign. It shows what you have to do.” Overcoming the Resistance and emerging victorious—that’s the idea for today.

White People Shooting 3-Pointers

When Joel Embiid first came over from Cameroon at the age of sixteen, he did not know a single word of English. He did not know a single person, and he did not understand the culture. But because he displayed some potential in basketball, he got an offer to play high school ball in Florida. On the first day of practice, however, he performed so badly that the coach kicked him out of the gym. “I didn’t know what I was doing,” Embiid said, “I was so skinny, so soft. But the worst part was that all my own teammates were seriously pointing and laughing at me, like the asshole kids in the movies about high school. It was crazy, I’m looking at these dudes, not really understanding what they’re even saying, like, ‘Damn guys, come on, let’s just trust the process here.’ And they’re just like, ‘LOL NAH YOU SUCK.’” Hit head-on with the Resistance, of not being good enough, he went back to his dorm and cried. “I was like, ‘This is crazy. What am I even doing here? I can’t play. I’m going home.’” But as he was paralysed in fear, “Suddenly,” Embiid recalled, “my competitive side took over. I got really, really motivated. Whenever people say I can’t do something, I actually love it. It makes me want to prove them wrong so bad.” It showed him what he had to do. Determined to overcome the Resistance and improve on the areas he was weak in— that is, shooting—Embiid would stay behind after practice with one of his teammates to do extras. But because his teammate was a talented shooter, it made Embiid look bad. “I have no form, no fundamentals…But I can’t take losing to this dude every day. I’m so competitive that I’m like, ‘I gotta beat this guy. I gotta find a way.” “So I’m chilling one night, and I go on YouTube, and I’m thinking I’m about to figure this shooting thing out.”

He typed in the YouTube search box:

HOW TO SHOOT 3 POINTERS.

Nope.

HOW TO SHOOT GOOD FORM.

Nah.

Then it struck him. He typed,

WHITE PEOPLE SHOOTING 3 POINTERS.

For hours, Embiid would study the perfect form of the guys on YouTube and then practice for hours on the court. “And I started being able to compete…because getting some range changed my whole game. Teams couldn’t play off me anymore, and I started doing a lot better.” In a game against San Antonio Spurs earlier this year, Embiid surpassed a franchise-record of 70 points, leading the Philadelphia 76ers to a 133-123 victory.

Only By Actual Practice

Since he was a child, Theodore Roosevelt’s father had hammered into him that he should be—no, must be—strong, fearless adults who are capable of overcoming the Resistance, regardless of the form it takes. To ensure this in his own children, Roosevelt had designed a series of frequent and terrifying tests of physical endurance which include long point-to-point walks led by Roosevelt himself. The only rule, however, was that his children could go through, over or under the obstacle—raging rivers, steep mountains, wild animals—but never around it. He would rather one of them die, Roosevelt said, than have them grow up as weaklings. The point was to attack his children’s wilderness fears, which Roosevelt often referred to as buck fever—“a state of intense nervous excitement which may be entirely divorced from timidity.” Even the most courageous man could freeze in fear when standing face-to-face with the Resistance. “What such a man needs,” Roosevelt said, “is not courage but nerve control, cool-headedness,” and to feel fear, to experience it as it is, is not a mark of a weak man. Rather, it’s a good sign—It shows what you have to do. And to overcome it, “this he can get only by actual practice.”

You Just Write

When Hugh Howey first attempted to write, he encountered a powerful Resistance. He immediately noticed the difference between the quality of what he wrote versus those of his favourite books. “It drove me nuts,” Howey said, “I wrote a chapter or two before walking away in disgust.” Overwhelmed by the Resistance and unable to break through, he gave up writing completely and instead, spent his time studying the craft. “And for twenty years,” Howey said, “I did that. I spent twenty years not writing.” At the 2009 Virginia Festival of the Book, an audience member asked the author Caroline Todd, “How do I write my first novel?” Todd leaped up, slammed the table with her palm and shouted, “You stop talking about writing. You stop dreaming about writing. You stop telling people you’re thinking about writing. You just write. You just sit down and you write!” “Returning home from the book festival,” Howey said, despite feeling the ick of the Resistance, but determined to prove himself wrong, “I sat in front of my computer and knocked out a rough draft for my first novel in two weeks.” When he sent it a pool of publishers, one offered to publish it. To date, he has written more than a dozen novels that sold millions and his trilogy, Silo, was adopted by Apple TV and became their number one drama of all time.

No One Would Know His Name Now

“Of course a man has to take advantage of his opportunities,” Roosevelt once said, “But the opportunities have to come.” These opportunities disguise themselves as the Resistance, which we are challenged to overcome everyday. “If there is not a war, you don’t get a great general; if there is not the great occasion, you don’t get the great statesman; if Lincoln had lived in times of peace, no one would know his name now.” The fears you fear are indicators of its importance. The fear you feel is the indicator of your growth. The fears you fear may paralyse you, but it’s a good sign. It shows what you have to do.