Friend-o-mine:

I’m generally good about not getting sucked into internet rabbit holes, but occasionally I indulge my word nerd-dom and just go there. In this week’s installment, I became curious about the phrase “pull out all the stops”.

The visual associated with that phrase in my mind’s eye was very clear. It involved a steep, San Francisco hill with a car parked just a micron downhill from the peak, just the way I’ve parked mine a million times: gear shift in ‘P’, parking brake engaged, wheels turned into the curb (just in case).

But then some unknown person, for some unknown reason, releases the parking brake.

No big deal.

Until said unknown person also slides the shifter back a couple notches, from P to N.

Hm. Okaaaaaay.

So it’s getting dicey here. But the wheels are still pointed toward the curb. Until they’re not.

You can probably guess what’s next. This curiously motivated hypothetical individual decides to turn the steering wheel as hard as they can in the other direction, creating a situation in which, you guessed it:

ALL THE STOPS HAVE BEEN PULLED OUT.

And once they have, the car that started this story at the top of the hill isn’t there for long. The laws of gravity and inertia take the stage, and an automotive freefall ensues, continuing until the car is stopped by some external force or obstacle or comes to rest on a flat road.

But that’s just what pulling out the stops looks like in my mind. I was curious as to what the phrase actually meant, so I consulted the Interwebs.

Organ-ic origins

“Pulling out all the stops”, as a phrase, originated with organs (the musical ones, not the physical ones). In Old English, “stoppes” were music notes or keys. As time went on and pipe organs became a thing, people started calling the knobs that controlled a given pipe organ’s capacity to play, “stops.”

Pushing in a stop limited the volume and range of said organ; pulling a stop out allowed it to play a wider range of notes and to play louder.

When you pulled out all the stops, you allowed the organ to play at its maximum capacity of both tones and volume.

Forcing vs. allowing

The reason we’re even talking about this is that I’d wanted to use the phrase “pull out all the stops” in something I was writing. So I checked its meaning in the Oxford Dictionary, which said it means “to apply great force”.

But that wasn’t quite the meaning I’d had in mind, so I went back to the very beginning.

You heard me right. I’m calling the Oxford Dictionary out. To “pull out all the stops” is NOT to apply great force. Pulling out all the stops just releases the deep down resistance that someone built into the organ, so you can receive the full benefit of its innate internal capacity.

See where I’m going with this? If you need a more exhilarating example, think about the car scenario: you don’t even have to turn the key in the ignition for that car to go from the top of the hill to the bottom. You just pull out all the stops and let the car and the laws of the universe do what they do.

And same goes for us. For our lives, the things we want to create. For your personal calling.

Here’s the deal: each of us was built with creative power coursing through our veins. Over a lifetime, our families, our society, our culture, even crises and traumas, they wire us with “stops”. We’re not born with them. When was the last time you saw a self-conscious newborn? Exactly. Never.

We are not born with stops. We acquire them.

Resistance (not the good kind)

Steven Pressfield buckets all these stops under the villainous header of Resistance. To be clear, we’re not talking about the good kind of resistance, the political kind. We’re talking about the internal force that derails us anytime we attempt to create something or level up closer to our highest selves.

It’s the force that creates all addictions, including addictions to drama and crises. It’s the force that powers perfectionism and procrastination. It’s the force that gives birth to fear, victim stories, self-medication and self-doubt.

I’ve come to believe that all Resistance has its roots in the deep down dread that haunts most people here in the West, and definitely most leaders and professionals: the acquired feeling that they are fundamentally flawed or that the world is, or both. The feeling that there’s maybe just a little something wrong with them, no matter how much they’ve achieved. Or that, when things are going really well, the chances are good that something bad is about to happen.

This goes back to the phrase I mentioned last week: the trance of unworthiness. My personal nickname for the trance of unworthiness is, in fact, The Big Stop.

Guys, my career has been a heckuva ride through almost every industry you can imagine that sells any form of personal growth and transformation. I’ve worked for some of the biggest and brightest, most transformational companies on this planet. No joke. I’ve had the blessing of leading nearly 8,000 people through my 30 Day Writing Challenges, which started as a passion project and are now part of my business. I’ve seen both their pain and their progress, intimately.

Here’s what I’ve learned: whether you’re trying to learn to mediate or setting a goal in your business or doing a Whole 30, if you are still in the haze of the trance of unworthiness, Resistance will be your enemy.

You know what to do. All of health and fitness media and personal growth literature exists to tell you how to do it. But the issue is not even the logistical how. It’s the spiritual and emotional how. It’s the truth that Resistance will rise up and rear its ugly head.

The more sophisticated transformational programs will call it out, like Pressfield does. And they will cheerlead you to power through it. Overcome it. Resist your internal Resistance.

But it’s so hard. It’s a Battle Royale. Sometimes, you can win it, achieving your goal or getting the thing done you were trying to do. But it’s such a struggle, and it’s hard to struggle like that for long or in different areas of your life. It’s exhausting. More importantly, it’s a battle you can never fully, finally win.

Because there’s always more to do. Always another battle to fight. That’s why some of the most successful people on this planet, by all appearances, still feel so empty. So worried about when they’ll ever get “there” so they can relax, finally.

Good news is, you can deactivate resistance entirely if you go deep enough, and wake up from the trance. You can learn to sit with the discomfort of radically accepting everything about yourself and your world, eliminating all that internal turbulence, judgment and Resistance. I don’t mean to be ok with injustice or to accept bad behavior from others. I mean to practice acknowledging what is true and embracing reality instead of emotionally flailing against it. And I mean from there, pouring the energy you used to invest in the struggle into everything you ever want to create and do and be.

That’s what MLK did. And Malala. Gandhi, too. And Michelle “when they go low, we go high” Obama.

It’s what peaceful revolutionaries do.

Next week, I’m doing a private, beta launch of a new program called the School of Upliftment. It will be a year-round collective focused on activating personal growth, creative power and spiritual wellbeing in every area of members’ lives. The objective is to transform the way members manage their everyday routines, bodies, emotions, careers and relationships for the better, helping them turn more of their thoughts into things without the struggle.

In the School of Upliftment, we will cover some foundations of wellbeing, including this revolutionary radical self-acceptance. Then we’ll systematically focus on every area of our lives through the lens of spiritual practice (like meditation and writing), transformational teachings and modern life skills. And we’ll do it all together.

It’s an inner revolution, powered by soul.

Head up + heart out,