Facing Distraction, Procrastination, and Resistance

In this episode of Notes for an Awesome Life, global top 100 business thinker John Spence joins host Josh Wilson to unpack one of the biggest obstacles to a fully awesome life: resistance.

From staring at a blank page to hitting the snooze button, resistance shows up as fear, distraction, and procrastination. John shares lessons inspired by Steven Pressfield and his book The War of Art, along with insights from Stoicism, Buddhism, and decades of personal study, including multiple rereads of Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.

You’ll learn:

• Why fear is the root of resistance
• How to “make it easy to win” by removing distractions
• Practical strategies to beat procrastination
• Why discipline beats motivation every time
• How aligning with your values helps you build an awesome life

If you’ve ever fallen off a routine, struggled with perfectionism, or let life’s chaos derail your goals, this conversation offers practical tools to reset, refocus, and move forward with intention.

Resistance never fully disappears but you can learn to outsmart it.

Listen in and start building your awesome life, one intentional decision at a time.

• Email us: awesomelifenotes@gmail.com
• Learn more about John: JohnSpence.com
• Familiar Wilsons Media: FamiliarWilsonsMedia.com

About John Spence: John is a globally recognized business thought leader, former owner/CEO of five companies, and advisor/coach to organizations from startups to the Fortune 10. He’s lectured at more than 90 universities and was named by the American Management Association as one of “America’s Top 50 Leaders to Watch.”

About the show: Notes for an Awesome Life with John Spence focuses on personal growth, happiness, clarity, and the everyday habits that compound into an AWESOME life.

Credits: Hosts John Spence and Josh Wilson • Produced by Josh Wilson for Familiar Wilsons Media • Special thanks: Amanda Wilson (writing and production), and Domingo Jimenez (writing and marketing).

Transcript

Setup And Wharton Prep

SPEAKER_01 0:00

This is a familiar Wilsons Media Production. John Spence is recognized as one of the foremost business thought leaders in the world, a global top 100 business thinker and advisor to companies from startups to the Fortune 10. But it didn't start that way. In college, John hit rock bottom, kicked out of one university and rejected by another. That's when he made a decision to change his attitude and take a systematic approach to building the life he wanted. Through hard work and relentless learning, he went on to create a life full of meaning, joy, and connection. I'm Josh Wilson, and this is Notes for an Awesome Life with John Spence. We invite you to join us in conversation as John shares with us the lessons, habits, and tools that he used and that you can use to build an awesome life. With John Spence. I'm Josh Wilson. I'm John Spence. John, how have you been? We took a week off.

SPEAKER_00 1:13

Part of it in bed sick, but gave me extra time to read when I was awake. Uh and that doing fantastic, man. Getting I start back on the road in about two weeks. I'm headed up to my favorite event of the year. It's my 27th year as a guest instructor at the Wharton School of Business for a thing called the Securities Industry Institute. All very, very high-level people, the financial industry. And it's my favorite because it's really challenging. The people in my classes are very, very, very accomplished. So I have to be on my toes. I've been working on my slides for months, and I'll work right until the day before I present. And they still, in my opinion, won't be good enough, but that's okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:58

I'm sure that'll be awesome. Best of luck to you.

SPEAKER_00 2:01

Thank you.

Naming Resistance And The Blank Page

SPEAKER_01 2:02

I want to talk to you a little bit today about this idea of resistance. This idea of resistance. Now, this podcast has been all about helping everyone listening and you and I build an awesome life. And so that means putting in the work. Sometimes, though, there is resistance. So you wrote this article about resistance. What brought that concept to your mind to write an article about it just then?

SPEAKER_00 2:26

I really, really got into the idea of uh understanding resistance when I started doing writing professionally, you know, writing books and such. Uh and uh you and I were talking in the setup before we hit record about an author named Stephen Pressfield, who wrote a great book called The War of Art. And it's all about the fact that, you know, one of the hardest things, and for those of the folks watching and listening, for an author is staring at a blank screen with that little cursor going, I can't use profanity, but blank, blank, blank, blank, uh, and trying to get the first couple of words down. I mean, I I'm pretty disciplined about spending an an hour or two minimum a day writing. And uh that first 45 minutes can just be staring at the screen or writing something, erasing it, writing it. I did one the other day where I wrote up what I thought was a really good blog, and I came back to it two weeks later. I went, this is total, you know what? And uh it just slapped me around in the face, like, oh man, you know, I gotta go at this again.

SPEAKER_01 3:36

What is resistance? What how do you define resistance in this context?

SPEAKER_00 3:41

Fear fear of not being able to do something at high enough quality. Um, and that fear shows up in uh distraction and procrastination. Uh at least for me, it's it's fear of if I'm facing that blank page, and for you, you're an artist at blank canvas, and I don't have inspiration per se, but I have to have the discipline to sit down and get it done. You know, I know that we talked last time, I think, about not worrying about the scoreboard, worrying about the process of how to get there. Um, that's the same sort of thing with writing or creating slides for me, writing speeches, uh, or preparing for strategic planning retreats. Is it's the um allure of doing easy stuff. You know, one of my favorite sayings is people do what's easy and convenient in their lives, not what is best for them. It's fighting against the tide of will this be good enough? Am I good at, you know, am I really talented enough to do this? That's a deep way to explain that, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_01 4:51

Made me um made me rub my new beard here. Fear is definitely a large part of it. I want to talk to you a little bit about my January and the reason why this kind of came up in my mind. So at the beginning of January, I was a house on fire. I had a new exercise regime, was journaling every morning, and I felt really good about myself. And then a couple of weeks in, the whole family got sick. And so that that threw me off my game a bit. And then um, I've got a situation with a friend who's very sick that I'm dealing with him, and that also kind of hit me in the in the feels and the emotions. And then just as we consider all of the chaos going around us, it really has all of that together, has has served to sap my energy, and it served as an obstacle, or maybe I should more accurately say I've allowed it to be an obstacle to me working on those processes, those routines, those goals that I set at the beginning of the year. So to me, I'm feeling resistance because of all of that.

SPEAKER_00 5:57

Yeah, and that's natural, it's it's to be expected. And as you're explaining that, I'm thinking about my own things I'm resistant, you know, to. And one of the things I've learned, and and you know, there'll be themes obviously for the listeners, watchers, what should I call them? The audience for you people, probably not you people.

SPEAKER_01 6:16

Let's stay away from that. Um, our friends uh out there that we've not made yet.

SPEAKER_00 6:20

Our friends out there. Thank you for the clarification. They've heard this phrase before make it easy to win.

SPEAKER_01 6:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:26

Um, I'll give you an ex really good, very up-to-date example. I found myself a couple of days ago not wanting to write or anything, so I flipped on Facebook and started watching reels. Uh, and two and a half hours later, I didn't realize that I'd been watching for two and a half hours. So I just erased it off all my devices.

SPEAKER_01 6:45

That's probably wise. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:46

If I want to look at it, I'll go through Google or whatever, find it, pick up, look at it for a little while. I do like to see what my friends are doing from time to time.

SPEAKER_01 6:54

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 6:55

But reels are, I figured so one of the ways to beat resistance is to remove as many obstacles as possible that will create resistance. You've got enough in your own head. It why set yourself up? Like uh, well, that's why I keep no sweets in my house.

SPEAKER_01 7:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:12

It doesn't matter if I get bored or lazy or if my quote unquote discipline breaks down. If I have no option other than an apple, I guess it's going to be an apple.

SPEAKER_01 7:22

I like this idea that that you talk about that we need to have something supporting us when motivation goes out the door. Because we cannot depend on motivation or the dopamine hit that we get from checking something off of a list because that's that's fleeting, isn't it?

Make It Easy To Win

SPEAKER_00 7:39

To me, all of it, and it keeps coming back to this, is I measured against my values. I've been reading a lot of Buddhism and philosophy, and what else was I reading this week? Oh, stoicism. And it was all about, and I don't want to, it's not depressing at all. It sounds like it contemplating death, but it's all about, and I came up with a sentence that I, or little poem, you you write poetry. Be today what you want them to say when you die. Part of that is to back up and say, Am I being the kind of person I want to be? Does the kind of person I want people to talk about, is that a person that was a craftsperson, um, cared about what they wrote, cared about how they treated people. So yeah, it's nice to check it off for me, though. It's more like, did it match my values? And is it gonna is it gonna help me be the person that I want to be remembered as? Does that help?

SPEAKER_01 8:29

That yes, it does help. You know, the the reminder of what did we call it? Resume virtues versus obituary virtues or something like that that you that you had said. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:40

The phrase that got me that I when I was reading is it's a philosophical phrase. Um, since death alone is certain and the time of death is uncertain, what should we do? Those first two sentences sound a little depressing, I guess. But when you back up, it's it's really a pretty answer. Be a good person today, be a kind person today, follow your values today. And to me, that's exciting. That's not, you know, that means I got plenty of time, or at least I hope I have plenty of time to work on this and continue to fight through the resistance, to fight through the obstacles and the challenges that present themselves every day, every hour, every minute, to continue to try to be the kind of person that I hope that people remember me like.

SPEAKER_01 9:25

This sounds funny to say, but it's good to hear that you were dealing with something even a couple of days ago. I mean, you've been studying this stuff for a while, and you you have been really hard at work at being intentional, and you still meet with resistance.

Values, Mortality, And Meaning

SPEAKER_00 9:41

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and you said I've been studying this for a while. Last night I picked up a book by the Dalai Lama, and whenever I read a book or reread it, I put the date in it. Uh, first time I read it was uh April of 2000. And I'm looking at it, that's been sitting on my shelf for 26 years. I keep pulling it down to look at it. And I've got you get I got these books behind me here, which I've read, but at home I have a full library too. And many of those are books. I just read Meditations by Mark of Marcus Aurelius for this particular edition, uh, eighth reread. And I think that's also something that helps you with resistance is going back to those anchors of what's truly most important to me, or what are these great lessons I'm learning. And that's one of the reasons I read that sort of stuff in the evenings, is it helps me prepare for the next day of saying, uh I'm pretty close, but I still got to fight through some stuff and boredom or resistance, or you know, that I I like it, the image image of a you know, a little, I don't know, goblin or something. I don't know, somebody sitting on your shoulder going, John, it'd be a lot easier to go to McDonald's and get a chicken sandwich right now than than writing that that paragraph. You know, oh great, there's two things. Don't write and eat food that I shouldn't. Excellent.

SPEAKER_01 10:58

That's a question. How often do you um ground yourself in those foundational things? How often do you go back and and read something? You know, how often do you make sure to to check in with those things that you learned 20, 30 years ago?

SPEAKER_00 11:12

The library in my bedroom has about 200 books in it that I keep reading and rereading. Uh so every night almost I'm going to pick something up in the evening or watch a video uh that's I won't call it motivational or inspirational, but it's just a reminder. I guess it does motivate and inspire. But it's easy for resistance to push you down, to make you forget those things. So I just keep trying to pull it up and keep it in front of my face so that the things that I believe are most important, which is really interesting, um, thanks to AI, uh, I've sent you a draft copy of my human operating system. Yep. Don't like the name yet, but that's 40-something years of all the philosophy and and uh self-help and all that sort of books sort of boiled down into one thing. The other day, I when I finished Marcus Aurelius' uh meditations for the 11th time or whatever, I decided I'd sit down and read into my computer everything I'd underlined in it over 20 years and then ask it to find the pattern. And it was fascinating. And I thought, wow, this is a real I'm gonna start doing that with my bunch of my books to say, I've read this a bunch of times, I've carefully underlined things, I've made notes and stuff. I wonder what this book, if I can capture everything what this book means to me and get it down to one page. And when it got down to the one page, it's a stuff I keep reading and rereading and looking at because it's it's the things I need, it's the resistance I need to overcome.

SPEAKER_01 12:42

Yeah, and that's super interesting. I would love to see the difference between the things that you picked out and and how that interprets that person's work, as opposed to their work taken in totality without the things that you've taken out. You know what I'm saying? And to see, like, because the stuff that you're taking out of this book is just a mirror that's showing your face. Yeah, um, and that's very interesting to me.

Rereading Stoics And Building Anchors

SPEAKER_00 13:03

I've got a buddy that I talk to about every 45 days, um, former special forces uh guy, really uh warrior um philosopher, and we challenge each other to read books, and then we compare what did we learn from the book individually. And Marcus, the reason I was reading it again was that was the book we challenged each other with uh over the last time. And it was fascinating to see that he took some very different things out of it than I did, based on his background, his beliefs, his experiences. Uh so it was fun, you know, never you never step in the same river twice. So every time I go back to it, I'm like, well, why in the world did I not underline this last time? Or why in the hell did I underline that? What the heck does that mean? I must have been in a bad mood that day.

SPEAKER_01 13:52

Oh, I can't imagine that, John. You in a bad mood?

SPEAKER_00 13:55

Rarely.

SPEAKER_01 13:57

Okay, are there any other tools that we need in our toolbox when we're trying to fight off resistance?

SPEAKER_00 14:02

This is what I used to do, and I still do a little bit. I give myself a little present if I achieve something that was really hard. Uh and for me, it used to be when I was traveling, if I if I got ready, prepared, did everything, gave what I would consider a good speech, did through everything I needed to do and felt good, I would go out and get myself a book. Uh so one of the ways to fight through resistance is if I can do my two pages of writing today, for me, I I get I'm trying to think, I get to take myself out to lunch someplace, or I get to take myself out to breakfast someplace and eat healthy food. Yeah. But that's my reward for I did I did that because I not had to, but again, we talked about process last time. I know the only way to write a couple of hundred-page book is to write a sentence or two every day. Yeah. And as long as I know I'm putting a couple sentences down, you know, and I hope for the folks out there, it this works in all parts of your life. You want to lose weight, you want to get better at communications, better at under list being a better listener. I had read something the night before about the incredible gift of listening well to other people. And I had breakfast with a friend this week, and normally I'd be doing the can you top this? And here's this story, and here's that. I just sat and listened to him for two hours. And I think I didn't say almost anything, and I think he had a great breakfast because he got to talk about all kinds of things that were important to him. Yeah. And I said, that's that I fought through the resistance of the way I normally I might normally talk with him, with a friend, where we're like, I said, no, not this time. I'm gonna just come in and listen to Al and see what out what's going on in his world.

SPEAKER_01 15:43

Well, and I think you said something there that that really hits on a thing for me, and that's something that I had to learn, um, not just with writing, but with all parts of my life, and that is not letting great be the enemy of good.

SPEAKER_00 15:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:57

Not letting perfection be the enemy of just getting stuff done. Yeah, and the writing analogy is great because you know, you write and write and write, and you just spew all those things out, and then you go back and edit it so that it's better. And that applies right throughout life, I think.

Rewards, Process, And Tiny Steps

SPEAKER_00 16:13

Yeah, you asked me before we get started, how do I know when I finished an article? And it's when I can't take anything else out. When I've written uh 900 words and I get it down to 700 or 500 and say, all right, this is the essence of what I was trying to share. All that other stuff was just I was gonna call verbal vomit, but that's a disgusting uh image for me. Uh, but I did say it now, now I have the image in my head. Unbelievable.

SPEAKER_01 16:37

Now now we have a guess what? I know everybody's like, oh, I didn't say that. I am not editing that out.

SPEAKER_00 16:43

But you know, get it all down there, and then what isn't important? I mean, I think that's actually a good practice for your life is what isn't important here? What can I remove? What isn't adding value? What for me, you know, what words are superfluous? We use the example, you know, it was truly hard. No, it was hard. Or it was another word that, like you said, that's even more elegant than the word hard. But I don't need to put a whole bunch of stuff around that concept. I can say it in when I had seven words, I could probably say in two or three or maybe one. Life is much the same. Is how how do I remove anything that isn't important, that doesn't match my values, that isn't going to help me be the person I want to be, uh, what I want people to say about me when I'm gone. And I think that frees up time and that removes things that could be resistance because you've taken away the opportunity for the resistance to even be there.

SPEAKER_01 17:40

Sure. And I think that that applies, like for example, to my morning exercise routine. You know, what do I take away? Well, I take away that extra 20 minutes that I'm spending in bed. I get up and I do some sort of exercise, and that's where the striving for starting and striving for good is better than striving for perfect form or whatever. I get up and I do twists and bends and I'm moving, and then maybe I improve that, but I've done it.

SPEAKER_00 18:05

You use a good example. The the alarm clock is evil.

SPEAKER_01 18:10

No, no, no. The snooze button is yeah, it wants you to push the snooze.

SPEAKER_00 18:14

Resistance is there saying just 10 more minutes. Just just 15 more minutes. Really, I you know, the the traffic isn't that bad this time in the morning. You can get where you need to go and sleep in another 20 minutes, or you know, uh, you don't have to shave like me, you know, although I didn't say, but you don't have to shave today. You know, you can sleep for an extra 15 minutes, then like me today, you'd show up and go, Oh crap, I had a uh uh podcast I was supposed to do. I didn't shave today. Well, resistance said stay for 15 more minutes.

SPEAKER_01 18:45

That's a few years ago, but I did see that there are alarm clocks that have wheels on them that they go. Have you seen these? They go off and then they roll away from the floor.

SPEAKER_00 18:54

They roll away.

SPEAKER_01 18:56

I need to get that.

Edit Your Life Like Your Writing

SPEAKER_00 18:57

Oh, or I made one that's called uh Kai. It's my dog, and as soon as the alarm goes off, she's gonna pounce on me and say, Oh, let's go, time to go up front. So I I don't have a snooze button, I have a vigil.

SPEAKER_01 19:12

Yeah, well, we have a nine-year-old, so it kind of works in the same way. We got to make sure that we feed and water him too. All right, John. So, resistance. What is our homework when it comes to dealing with resistance this week?

SPEAKER_00 19:25

Catch yourself procrastinating on something that's important, something you want to do, and you're just sitting there and I'll use you know, staring at the screen or hitting a snooze, or uh, I can't find my tennis shoes, so I'm not going to the gym this morning. Uh put them in the middle of the floor. You know, do something, but figure out something you're procrastinating at that you know you should should be doing. And when I say should, it's not like uh it should as in this matches my values, this aligns up with where I want my life to be. Uh, I know that when I get through this, it will give me joy and happiness and a sense of accomplishment. But I keep, you know, like me, uh, read take Facebook off your off your phone. You know, win back an hour a day or two hours a day, depending on how uh easily you can get pulled into it, which for me is way too easy. So resistance can say, watch just another reel, just one two hours later.

Intentional Living And Anti-Autopilot

SPEAKER_01 20:24

Yeah, one of the things along those lines that I'm trying to do a lot more of this week, since I have noticed that I'd fallen off, and that is just living with a lot more intention. And you're saying noticed when you resist. And and so I'm trying to notice all of the things that I do. I've started to take a different way to work because I've noticed that I'll get in my car, I'll drive my kid to school, and then that drive from his school to my work, it's like it's gone. It's it's I I'm on such autopilot that it's gone. And I don't like that. That feels very much not intentional. So I take a different way to work. So I have to pay attention to the street. And so I think hand in hand of what you're talking about is just live live a life that's a lot more on purpose and intentional.

SPEAKER_00 21:08

I like that. I like that. I'll go with that.

SPEAKER_01 21:11

Well, John, thank you so much. It's so so good to be back in the saddle with you this week. Um, glad you're feeling better. And you as well. Well, thank you. So thank you for your time. Also, of course, thank you to my wife, Amanda, who is actually right now sick in bed. So wow. Healing vibes to her. John, would you like to thank anyone this week?

SPEAKER_00 21:32

I'll thank Kai for waking me up every morning.

SPEAKER_01 21:35

Very good. She's helps me avoid resistance. The newest part of the team. All right, folks. If you want to know more about John Spence, go to johnspence.com, conveniently named for your ease of use. And of course, you'll find all about John and the work that he does, his blog, um, articles, and and all of the other things that he puts on there to make your lives better. Let's be honest. Um If you want to find out more about Familiar Wilsons Media, which is the uh well, it's me basically. Uh I'm just gonna say the team that produces this video, that would be me.

SPEAKER_00 22:10

Me, myself, and I.

SPEAKER_01 22:11

That's right. Uh, go ahead and drop by familiarwilsonsmedia.com. But until next week, I just want you all to go out there and really, really, really live a really, really good, awesome life. How's that for all the descriptors that you love, Josh?

SPEAKER_00 22:28

I was as you were saying, I'm like, no, we don't need this, we don't need this, we don't need that. We've got this word out. Have an awesome life. There you go.

SPEAKER_01 22:36

All right, thank you, everyone.