Dealing with Resistance: How to Cut Off the Dreamstealers

Are you dealing with resistance to your dreams to have a legal nurse consulting business? Many LNCs are working full time or part time and also using free time to market to attorneys, work on their businesses or work on cases. That may mean a shift in responsibilities within their household.

Multitasking – keeping a job, markeitng, and doing cases – can stir up resistance in a family member about those changes that are necessary for the business owner to be able to move forward. The people who resist you are those who want to steal your dream: dreamstealers.

I’ve embarked on so many new ventures and I’ve met so much resistance myself, so I completely understand. I think the best advice I have is to really stay the course. Be true to yourself.

Dealing with Resistance by Not Being a Crowd Pleaser

We need to stop living to please everybody else. What happens is if we make decisions from a place of trying to please other people we wind up

(1) not living in our dreams, our passion and purpose, and
(2) creating a level of resentment between us and the person that we’re trying to please.

That’s not healthy for your relationships either, so if it’s your dream, stake your claim on it and go for it.

Stay strong and with conviction about what it is you feel is right for you to do. Make that clear to everybody and get them on the bandwagon. Let them know how much you appreciate their support and that things may change and the dynamics may change, but let them know that you’re a team. You can all work through this together so that everyone can be happy and create a win-win situation.

“When you take on a new role, there may be loved ones, friends, or colleagues who are not comfortable with your new role. They may prefer you in your old role.” Michael Port, author of Steal the Show

(Michael is a keynote speaker, actors and coach. The day this blog is published I am in Fort Lauderdale taking a three day training with him to improve my speaking abilities.)

Michael says, “If the people around you hold you back from playing new and different roles, roles that serve your dreams, these people have to go.” Or they have to change with you.

I remember when I returned to University of Pennsylvania for my masters degree in nursing. My husband resisted the changes in our lives necessitated by me being in school full time. I went to school 4 days a week, had a two-year-old son, and did homework on the fifth day.

My husband’s resistance made it very difficult for me to succeed and I became suicidal. I finally had to say to him, “Look, I travel to Philadelphia thinking about driving my car into a tree in order to escape this pressure. You either accept this new life or you lose me.” Blunt but effective. He backed off, and now realizes that my masters degree opened so many doors that he describes it as our best investment.

You get one shot at life. It is yours to live to fulfill your dreams. Don’t let fears and resistance hold you back from creating your LNC business the way you want it to be. Don’t allow yourself to get to the point where hitting a tree seems like a desirable way out. Dealing with resistance can turn a nightmare into a success.

For more inspiration, listen to Dana Zarcone share her experiences and wisdom in Flying in the Face of Fear: Empowering Women. She is my guest interviewee on podcast.LegalNursebusiness.com. Listen in.