This inspiration tickled me and my husband into many hilarious test drives. We played with WHEN to tell the salesperson my number one criteria: orange! New and used. Even drove 90 miles with high hopes, only to discover a car was the WRONG orange. Suddenly Happy Orange was the new standard.

I invited some friends to our house to watch the movie called The Secret and told them how I was running an experiment to manifest an orange car. They all laughed and gave me funny looks as if I’d lost my marbles.

By Independence Day, I lustily ordered a new orange car on sale. When the dealer called, I was thrilled and ran to tell my husband. He said, “It’s your decision.”

As I walked back to the phone, my whole body chemistry changed from the adrenalin rush of victory, through the heaviness of additional debt, into murky frustration. I took the phone and said, “No, thanks.” After all these months, in 30 seconds I realized I would not buy the orange car until I could truly pay for it.

I thought, “Perhaps this is why the orange car idea came to me…”

Two months later, I eliminated $3000 of stale business debt and was back in the black. Was this the lesson of the orange car: get out of debt? I wondered.

February 6, 2007, I had a surreal, snowstorm hood-cruncher car accident, miraculously leaving no one injured and the other two cars unmarked.

Online I found another miracle: a 3 month old ad for my orange dream car was still there for sale, 1000 miles away, only 2 hours from my parents house.

By now, I was really clear about my vision. The car must be:

• fuel efficient, as in at least 30 miles/gallon
• roomy enough so my husband did not hit his head getting in and out
• happy orange
• a FUN car
• a bit quirky
• in my price range
• in great condition

We prepared to fly 1100 miles to get a great deal on my limited edition, orange “Happy Car.”

The funniest part is that after all the test drives, jokes and research, here we were ready to buy and everyone around us, including the owner thought the sale was impossible.

I kept laughing out loud as another bit of resistance popped up like a carnival target in a shooting range. (You can skip to the end if you just want to see how it all turned out.)

First, it was how can we possibly buy tickets to fly when we don’t know if we’re flying or driving home? Frankly, I just went ahead and bought one-way tickets and figured, I’d take the train or buy more cheap one-ways. Of course, I needed to save my negotiations over the car until I got to actually test drive it. This meant making sure that the owner knew I was not dependent upon the car to get home.

Then, the owner called, after we bought our plane tickets, to say that there was a problem with the bank that held his loan. They were not willing to process our title the same day we bought it. I did my own research and found that in Pennsylvania, it is not so easy to sell a car as it is in Minnesota. Still, I was undeterred. I just kept reassuring him that there had to be a way, that we were indeed coming, and that we would need to be able to drive away with the vehicle on the day we handed over the money.

When we arrived in Pennsylvania, my father was incredulous, “An orange car! You can’t buy an orange car. You’ll be pulled over by the police all the time.” He just shook his head when we told him over breakfast where we were headed and why it was such a short trip. We giggled quietly.

Of course we brought our own resistance on the 2 hour trek to test drive the car. Despite the fact that my husband reads maps for a living and we had excellent directions, we missed our exit on the PA turnpike and took ourselves on a detour.

If that wasn’t enough, my mum decides, after we’ve all done a test drive with the owner, that she’s highly suspicious of him and the minute we are alone with her, she starts rattling off every imaginable (and unimaginable) way he could be cheating us or even turn into a psycho path! I finally just had to take a deep breath and let it out with some noise. Then I asked my mother to PLEASE just try to imagine that this could all work out wonderfully. She stopped in mid-thought as if startled and said, “Well, I guess you could be right. You always do think positively.”

It had been babied by its owner, and he had it decked out with fancy wheels. I negotiated a price that felt good to us and the owner.

Then we dealt with a bit more resistance as he was still unsure how we could drive away with his car, with his license plates still on it, despite the fact that we had paid him in full. Seem perfectly possible to us.

We explained that where we came from people trust each other in car deals every day and we alerted our insurance company that we’d bought this car. And then, he changed his mind. He decided he could just trust us to send his license plates back when the title cleared.

With the car, came the whole set of original, brand new wheels that had no miles on them! Perfect for driving home through the biggest blizzard to hit the Midwest in 2007. We drove home with ease because we were always ready to pull into a hotel for the night, just as the next wave of the blizzard would roll across our path.

Today, a year later, I’m still in the black. Yes, I’m making my payments with ease.

No kidding. Want a ride?

I notice when my clients feel Resistance around growing their companies. I notice when they get nervous about genuinely stepping into the spotlight for the world to behold. Read Rosemary’s View of Resistance.

Resistance takes many forms and is noticeable in body language.

• People actually stay in one place when they are stuck.
• Muscles clench.
• Walking becomes stiff.
• Smiles disappear and are replaced with blank looks or furrowed brows.

Read a fun treatise on Resistance and the creative process called The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles by novelist Steven Pressfield (The Legend of Bagger Vance; Gates of Fire). It is an excellent way to raise your awareness of what resistance is and how to recognize it.

Here is an excerpt from this book:

RESISTANCE’S GREATEST HITS

The following is a list, in no particular order, of those activities, which most commonly elicit Resistance:

1. The pursuit of any calling in writing, painting, music, film, dance, or any creative art, however marginal or unconventional.
2. The launching of any entrepreneurial venture or enterprise, for profit or otherwise.
3. Any diet or health regimen.
4. Any program of spiritual advancement.
5. Any activity whose aim is tighter abdominals.
6. Any course or program designed to overcome an unwholesome habit or addiction.
7. Education of every kind.
8. Any act of political, moral or ethical courage, including the decision to change for the better some unworthy pattern of thought or conduct in ourselves.
9. The undertaking of any enterprise or endeavor whose aim is to help others.
10. Any act which entails commitment of the heart. The decision to get married, to have a child, to weather a rocky patch in a relationship.
11. The taking of any principled stand in the face of potential reprisal.

In other words, any act which disdains short-term gratification in favor of long-term growth, health or integrity. Or, expressed another way, any act that derives from our higher nature instead of our lower. Any act of these types will elicit Resistance.

“Trained by his boss to attack without warning (the better to keep Clouseau on guard and in shape), Cato has invariably done his job too well, kicking and chopping at the Inspector at the most inopportune times — when Clouseau is making love, for example.” – New York Times

We each move through life, much like Clouseau, full of our own logic and foibles. Our Resistance is like Cato whose task is to kill us. Resistance shows up with the Cato’s timeliness, bringing the biggest challenges just before we are about to be really successful and just after we’ve tasted success.

When it comes to working with resistance, I differ with Pressfield.

Rather than see a war, I see a team effort of your own “Little Rascals” run amuck. Have you ever seen the classic black and white television series called the “Little Rascals” also known as “Our Gang?”

“The Little Rascals represents a happy-go-lucky haven from the pretensions and rules of the adult world. Caught up in the timeless struggles of childhood, a gang of good-natured kids fights back with the only tools they have: common sense, friendship and an indomitable spirit. ” – kingworld.com

“A wealthy society matron treats the underprivileged kids of the gang to an outing at her country estate. The gang turns both the journey and the visit at the farm into a chaotic adventure.” – tv.com

We all have our own set of “Little Rascals” inside us. The most famous one is “The Inner Child,” written about in many books. Let me assure you there are others. All we need to do is roll call! Some show up like archetypal characters and others are simply another aspect of our Self.

Just like the television series, there are times in our lives when our inner gang of rascals is leading us on an adventure and trouble ensues. This trouble looks a lot like Pressfield’s Resistance.

Why does the Resistance happen? In the stories of the “Little Rascals” trouble inevitably resulted when one of the Rascals was left out or didn’t understand what was going on. This Little Rascal was inevitably the cause or at the center of the chaos. Our inner gang of rascals can have the same problems when we try to move forward to achieve our dreams.

The key to overcoming Resistance is team work.

If you’re training for your own Olympic level achievement in life and you’ve got a rag tag support team, you need to work with them like a coach. You probably need to do some training together and have team meetings.

At Intuitive Plan, we engage your Rascals in conversations and find out who feels left out and what kind of support they need to contribute to the team’s success. Often the rest of the gang can rally to support rascal who is instigating resistance to your success.

A client was struggling with the slow pace of starting her business. She was aware of other parts of herself wanting her to slow down, but she thought she had to actually kill them to move forward.

The opposite was true.

Her adventuresome rascal that had been driving the business development so far was getting a little pushy with this fledgling venture. The resistant rascal only wanted to make sure that care was taken with this young project to keep it growing into maturity and not die an early death.

When this dynamic was brought to light, she was able to see the wisdom of both rascals and make agreements to move forward.

Intuitive Plan helps you take a roll call of your gang of rascals AND provides you with tools for ongoing conversations together.