Why We Resist the Seasons We Need Most

What are you resisting right now—and what might that resistance be telling you?

In this episode of Navigate, Tim shares from his own experience of stepping away from a ministry role to pursue coaching more fully—and the resistance that surfaced along the way. What looked like a career decision was actually touching nearly every area of his life: family, finances, relationships, identity, purpose, and faith.

Resistance doesn't always mean we're headed in the wrong direction. Sometimes it reveals what we're afraid of losing, what matters most to us, or where growth is asking us to release something familiar.

In this episode, we'll explore how to become curious about resistance rather than simply trying to overcome it—and how to discern the invitation that may be hiding underneath it.

Reflection Question:
What am I resisting right now—and what might that resistance be telling me?

Explore Your Own Transition

If you're navigating a season of change, the Transition Impact Assessment can help you identify which areas of your life are being most affected and where you may need greater clarity and attention.

Take the Transition Impact Assessment:
https://encompasslifecoaching.podia.com/transition-impact-assessment

Learn more about Tim's coaching, resources, and upcoming workshops at encompasslifecoaching.com.

Transcript

Tim Austin 0:01

Welcome to Navigate with Tim Austin, a podcast for anyone navigating life's seasons of change. Here, we believe transition isn't just something to survive, it's an opportunity for growth. Each episode offers practical coaching insights to help you navigate change with greater clarity, confidence, and hope. I'm Tim Austin, and I'm glad you're here. Now, let's navigate this conversation together Here's a question to get us started. What am I resisting right now, and what might that resistance be telling me? There are seasons in life when we know something needs to change. Maybe we can't fully explain it. Maybe we don't know exactly what the next chapter looks like. But somewhere beneath the surface, we sense that the season that we're in is coming to an end, or at least that something needs to shift. And yet, even when we sense that change may be necessary or even good, we resist it. Why is that? Why do we sometimes resist the very seasons that may be inviting us to grow? And that's what I want to explore with you today. And rather than giving you the first five steps or three strategies, I wanna build this episode around one coaching question. What am I resisting right now, and what might that resistance be telling me? Because I've come to believe that resistance isn't always something we need to overcome. Sometimes we need to listen to it, notice it. I remember wrestling with this tension several years ago when I was considering stepping away from my part-time role as an executive pastor so I could devote myself more fully to growing my coaching practice. By that point, coaching wasn't simply an idea I was n- I was experimenting with. I loved coaching. I had seen the impact it was having in people's lives. I was growing professionally, and deep down, I sensed that moving more fully into coaching was the next faithful step for me. And yet I resisted it. For a while, I found plenty of reasons not to make the change. And interestingly, most of those reasons weren't really about coaching. They were about everything else. I thought about my family. How would this decision affect them? Would I be introducing unnecessary uncertainty? Was I asking them to take a risk simply because I wanted to pursue something new? Then I thought about the people I served alongside in ministry. I genu- I genuinely loved my, uh, colleagues, my teammates. These weren't simply coworkers. They were people I shared life and ministry with. Would they feel abandoned? Would my leaving create more work for someone else? Was I letting people down? And then there were those practical questions. What about finances? What if the coaching practice didn't grow the way I hoped it would? What if I stepped away from something stable only to discover that I had made the wrong decision? Sound familiar? Underneath some of those questions was an even deeper question. What if I misunderstood God's leading? And that's a powerful question when you're trying to make a significant decision. And if you're not careful, it can keep you stuck for a very long time As I worked through that season, I began to realize something that has become increasingly important in my coaching work. Every significant transition touches multiple areas of our lives. We tend to describe transitions by the most visible change. I'm changing careers. Uh, we're moving. I'm retiring. My role is changing. My kids are leaving home. I'm stepping away from leadership. But a career transition is rarely just about work. A move isn't just about where you live. Retirement isn't simply about no longer going to the office. Significant change ripples outward. It affects relationships, finances, routines, identity, purpose, our emotional lives, and often our spiritual lives as well. So looking back, that's exactly what was happening to me. What seemed like one decision, leaving a pastoral role to focus on coaching, was actually touching nearly every important area of my life. Every spoke of what I now call the transition impact wheel was involved. No, no wonder that decision felt so weighty. I wasn't simply deci-ciding whether to change jobs I was trying to understand what that decision would mean for my family, my relationships, my finances, my identity, my calling, and my future. Big questions. And maybe that's true for you right now. Perhaps there's a decision or transition in front of you that seems like it should be relatively straightforward, but it doesn't feel that way. You keep circling it, thinking about it, second-guessing yourself, moving toward it and then backing away. And if that's where you are, don't immediately assume something is wrong. Your resistance may simply be showing you how much this transition is touching in your life. Looking back on my own transition, I can see something else more clearly now. My resistance wasn't necessarily telling me I was moving in the wrong direction. Some of it was telling me what I was afraid of losing, and that's an important distinction. We often interpret resistance as a stop sign. If I'm this uncomfortable, maybe I shouldn't do it. Or if I have this many questions, maybe it's not the right time. And if this were really God's direction, wouldn't I have more peace? Sometimes resistance does contain a warning we need to pay attention to, but not always. Sometimes resistance is simply the natural response to anticipated loss. Because even good transitions involve loss. When we move towards something new, we're often leaving something behind. A role that has helped define us, relationships that have mattered to us, a, a routine that has become comfortable, a place where we know how things work. We're comfortable with it. A reput- a reputation we've built, a sense of competence, a certain level of financial predictability. So lots of things that we have, that have been, uh, kept us feeling comfortable, safe, stable, secure, you name it. Maybe even a version of ourselves that we've grown accustomed to being. And that's why grief and hope can exist together in transition. You can be genuinely excited about what's ahead and still grieve what's ending. You can believe you're making the right decision, and you can still feel afraid. You can sense God's invitation towards something new and still have moments when you wanna return to what's familiar. Those things aren't necessarily contradictions. They're part of being human, and I think that's one of the gifts of becoming curious about our resistance instead of immediately trying to get rid of it. We can ask, "What am I afraid of losing?" That's a powerful question. Maybe you're afraid of losing security. Maybe it's approval. Maybe you're afraid of disappointing someone. Maybe it's your identity, your community, your competence, your independence, or simply the predictability of knowing what tomorrow is going to look like. And once we can name what we're afraid of losing, the resistance often begins to make more sense. Over time, I began to see my own transition differently. Stepping away from my pastoral role wasn't ultimately just about building a coaching practice. It was about becoming the person I needed to become for the next season of my life. And, and that's harder to measure. You can create a, a business plan. You can run financial projections. You can set goals. You can make a list of pros and cons, and all of those things can be helpful, but transition often involves something deeper than deciding what we're going to do next. It invites us to consider who we're becoming. And in my case, God wasn't only changing what I did, He was changing me personally, professionally I needed to grow in ways that staying where I was probably wouldn't, uh, have required of me I, I needed to take greater responsibility for my own direction. I needed to become more comfortable with uncertainty. I needed to trust what God had already been developing in me, and I needed to loosen my grip on a role that had been meaningful and good so I could make room for something new. And that's often how growth works. We would probably prefer growth to happen while everything around us stays comfortably in place, but it rarely works that way. Growth often asks something from us. It asks us to release, to trust, to experiment, to risk, to step towards something before we know exactly how it's going to turn out So let me bring this back to you. What are you resisting right now? Maybe you've been thinking about a career change. Maybe you're approaching retirement. You know, uh, you need to begin imagining life differently. Maybe a relationship is changing. Maybe you're sensing that a role you've held for years no longer fits the person you're becoming Maybe there's something you need to begin or something you need to end. Maybe you don't even have the words for it yet. You simply know that something feels unsettled. Rather than immediately asking, "How do I get rid of this resistance?" try becoming curious about it. Ask yourself, "What am I really afraid of losing here?" And then ask, "Which area of my life feels most threatened or impacted by the transition? Is it financial? Is it relational, emotional, vocational, spiritual? Is it connected to your identity?" And then perhaps even ask a deeper question, what's the invitation? What invitation might God be extending to me beneath all those questions? Not what does God want me to do so I don't mess this up, but what might God be inviting me to notice? What might he be asking me to trust? Who might I be becoming in this next season? There are different kinds of questions that are helpful in these kinds of, uh, moments as we're considering potential transition. And the, and these questions are, are much more helpful than, than ones that are maybe more black and white or, uh, I should type of questions, or I must type of questions, or putting some kind of deadline on a transition if we don't need to. One of the reasons we resist transition is that we want certainty before we move, and we want to know what the, that the decision is right, and that the finances will work, that the people we care about will understand, that the new opportunity will succeed, that we won't have regrets. And if we're people of faith, we'd really like some assurance that we've understood God correctly. But most meaningful transitions don't come packaged that way. Mine certainly didn't. Transition is rarely about making a perfect decision with perfect information. It's about learning to move forward with wisdom, courage, and trust, even when every answer isn't yet clear. And that doesn't mean being reckless. It doesn't mean ignoring legitimate concerns, and it certainly doesn't mean that every uncomfortable feeling is evidence that you should push forward It's means we learn to distinguish between resistance that is warning us and resistance that is simply revealing what matters deeply to us. That kind of discernment takes time and it takes reflection. Sometimes it takes conversations with people we trust. Sometimes we simply need enough courage to take the next faithful step and see what we learn So as you move into the rest of your day or your week, I want to leave you with the question we started with. What am I resisting right now? And what might that resistance be telling me? Don't rush to answer that. Sit with it for a while. Maybe write about it. Reflect on it. Pay attention to what surfaces. Your resistance may be telling you that you're afraid. It may be showing you what you value. It may reveal something that you're grieving. It may point, uh, toward an area where you need g-greater clarity. And yes, sometimes it may be warning you to slow down. But resistance can also show up at the edge of growth The very place where something familiar is ending and something new is beginning. So instead of treating resistance as the enemy, become curious about it. Listen to what it's telling you, and then ask, "What would a wise, courageous, faithful step look like from here?" You don't have to have the whole path figured out. You just need enough clarity for the next step Thanks for joining me for another episode of Navigate. If today's conversation resonated with you, I'd love to invite you to visit encompasslifecoaching.com. There, you'll find practical resources, articles, workshops, and my free Transition Impact Assessment, a coaching tool designed to help you discover where transition is impacting your life the most and where you might want to focus next. And if you found this episode helpful, be sure to subscribe and consider sharing it with someone who may be navigating a season of change. Sometimes the greatest gift we can offer is helping someone realize they're not alone. Until next time, remember, transition isn't just about what changes around us. It's about what changes within us. As you navigate your own journey, may you find greater clarity, confidence, and hope for the road ahead. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time