Do you refuse to do things that you resist?
I know I sure do sometimes.
Refusing to feel the resistance keeps us in our “uncomfortable” comfort zone.
When we feel the resistance, recognize it and move forward, we build the resilience to keep moving forward.
Join me today for some inspiration and ideas on how to move through this.
Listen and enjoy!
The Inner Singer Podcast
Episode 64 – Transcripts
Resistance, Refusal, Resilience
You’re listening to episode number sixty-four.
Welcome to the Inner Singer Podcast, providing tools and techniques to strengthen your inner singer, your beliefs, your confidence, your mindset. And now, your host for the Inner Singer Podcast, Mike Goodrich.
Wow! Sixty-four episodes. Well, hey there this is Mike Goodrich. Welcome to The Inner Singer Podcast. And thank you so much for being with me today. I just finished recording on another episode, number sixty three. Where I got very excited, very enthusiastic. So I’m bringing it down for a second here, where we start this one. So I don’t start where I left off energetically. Otherwise, that could drive you crazy. That’s kind of a principle. You’ve got to meet the audience where they are, right? And then begin to raise the energy I went to. It’s actually makes sense.
First of all, how are you? I hope you’re doing great. I hope all is great with you. Your singing and your Inner Singer and since we last met things have been unfolding beautifully for you. I am going to talk in just a second about something that’s atleast is very interesting to me. And I think it may give you a few ideas as well.
Let’s get back to this energy thing. I had no idea I was going to talk about that my wife and I were at a workshop one night. Really, if you could call it a workshop. It was more of there were some speakers. It was more that kind of a thing. We were at this place where there are some speakers. Actually, where we were, we don’t go there and we don’t frequent that. It was a few years back. We were to place out in Los Angeles called the Agape.
You may know Michael Beckwith. He’s the one who started the Agape. We were out there. We never really went there to go there but we had been to weddings there and he’d gone there. We went there for this particular evening for a talk. They would have some people that showed up and spoke. We were watching somebody. They had a nice job. I can’t remember who they were. Well if they went. And then this other gal came on and she actually gave a really good taught. But it was a terrific lesson for me because she came on with such incredible high energy that it really really put me off. I just looked at my wife and I said “Whoa”. I don’t know if I could take this because not only it was in high energy, but the energy felt phony. It just felt like high energy for high energy’s sake.
Let’s sing high just because we can. Like she was expected to come out because she was this motivational person, inspirational person or whatever. I won’t mention her name. And she came out. And boy, she just hit the ground running in like a hundred miles an hour and you had to try and catch up with her. She never slowed down. She didn’t meet the audience where they were. ‘Cause the last guy had not left us in that place and maybe that’s why she felt she had to come out here and really wake us up but it was unpleasant. I didn’t even know I was going to say that. I just thought of what I did and kind of bringing the energy down just a little bit from the last one. Literally, I just turned off the mic, saved the podcast then started this new one. If I had started it from the energy level that I had at the last one, it would have felt like “Wow, what if someone sees my face about today.” It’s just too much. You have to take the audience with you on that journey on that right, right? You, as a performer, you know whether or not you perform it doesn’t matter. Still, this is still a really great principle in life.
If you’re having a conversation with somebody, you meet somebody over at an event or party, or just somebody. Or they’re a little soft spoken, they’re a little bit relax. And it happened that you come off some real high energy, high energetic “Ho!”. It’s the same thing with performing. You got to kinda get their attention if you’re doing a talk. If you’re performing a song, a lot of times I start with an up tempo because it kind of relaxes the audience and relaxes the performer. But the dialogue needs to be a little bit more down to earth. We were giving a talk.
Let’s get away from the subject right now. I had no idea was I was going to talk about that but what the heck. I think it’s valuable. I think it’s worth it. And today, I want to talk about what I think I’ll just call the three R’s. Never when we were kids it was reading, writing, arithmetic. Now, I’m not sure how arithmetic starts with an R nor am I sure how writing starts with an R.
I think that’s one of the things in schools that is like “Hello! Reading. Writing. Arithmetic”. I’m sure that didn’t come from the school. But anyway, I’m of three R’s. I’m talking about resistance, refusal and resilience.
Why am I talking about these? Well, because I resisted resistance for a long long long long time, and they still do. Kind of wired into me to resist anything that isn’t easy. That should have been through in my life. I was brought up in I don’t even know what to call it, maybe spiritual or personal growth but more on the spiritual side. Which is the word that I don’t even like anymore because it’s so loaded. It’s kinda like people say on the spiritualist. Okay really, how is that different than your life? As if naming spirituality as something separate and apart from everything else. Again, that’s my soapbox. You know me, I get on soapboxes. Im gonna climb off right now so we can talk about resistance, refusal and resilience.
I resisted resistance forever. It still in my wiring to do that and I have to really really watch myself on that. When something gets difficult I tend to not want to do it because I tend to attach- if it’s difficult it’s wrong. If it were right in my life and right for me to do, it would be easy. All the doors would open up. Everything would be peaches and regalia, as Frank has said. And I would just live happily ever after.
Unfortunately, seriously as wired into me. I have to really be mindful of my default behavior when I’m doing something that doesn’t work or doesn’t look like it’s going to work or isn’t working the way I think it should or isn’t working as fast as I think it should. My default wiring is always to quit and go on to something else.
I really have to watch myself because that’s a programming that comes from the belief that of perfectionism. It comes from a belief that if this was ordained from on high, all of the heavens would open and all the doors would open. It would be really really easy. Therefore, if I’m having trouble learning how to sing, building my high notes, creating a course, doing a podcast or getting this in front of somebody or starting this or doing that. It must not be the right thing and I should go on to something else.
A lot of people says nothing worth doing that isn’t a little bit of challenging. If it’s worth doing it’s worth it. I can’t even remember the anecdote. My resistance in resistance is hardwired in. I just really always thought that things should be totally easy, totally hunky dory.
One day, I was in Nashville with my wife and my buddy Greg. We were teaching years ago before my little boy was born. He’s ten years old now. My buddy Brett was having an event out there. He had some fun people out there, Keith Urban. He had one of the guys, Mark Cable from Take Six and just really some cool people out there. He wanted us to come out and do some teaching. So I said sure because we were friends and we’re still our friends.
We flew out there and had a good time. On the way to the event, I was talking to Greg and I said to him, “Greg, he’s a good buddy of mine he’s a teacher, great teacher in Vegas.”. I said, “You know Greg, singing is really just balanced resistance. And he said, “That’s brilliant. I’m gonna use that.”.
What I mean by that is that there’s a lot of resistance in singing. For example, when the vocal chords come together so that we have what we call- chord closure. Their job is to resist the air before they open for a vibration. If they don’t close and resist the air, you get no sound – so that’s the first resistance.
There’s another resistance, you have the breathing muscles. You have your inhaling muscles and your exhaling muscles. Ordinarily, they work independently of each other. However, in singing they resist each other. There is a gentle antagonism between you and between them, which give the air flow and then the chords resist that. So you have the inhaling muscles and the exhaling muscles resisting each other and you have the vocal chords resisting the air. That’s two sets of resistance.
You have yet another resistance in the voice. You have two sets of muscles that work the vocal chords were the pitch is. One is called the thyroid retinoid muscles, which is the TA muscle as we call it. That really contracts the chords, makes them thicker and fatter for just voice low notes. Then we have the cracker thyroid muscle, which is on the outside of chords.
The TA muscles or thyroid retinoid muscles are on the insides of the chords are actually muscles within the chords. Cracker thyroid muscles are muscles outside the chords. They stretch the chords for the high notes. Make the chords shorter and thinner. They stretch for the high notes. Well-balanced singing is a balanced coordination and resistance of those two sets of muscles. They oppose each other.
Now in singing, you have three obvious sets of resistance and times when resistance is actually a really really good thing.
“I’m about to go to the gym. If I don’t lift enough weights to resist my strength a little bit, I won’t get bigger and then I won’t get stronger.”. That’s a good resistance, right.
If I’m playing baseball, like everybody knows I love baseball. Let’s not even use me. But let’s say you’re going to a ball game. You’re watching your favorite player get up and they hit the home run. And you can hear it on the wood bat hit the ball hits the bat. It’s like “Wow”. You just know it. You hear it. You can tell by the swing, you can hear the sound, you can tell by the look on the batters face and the pitchers face as he quickly turns around to watch the ball go over the fence.
Now, how do you hit a home run? You get the most amount of wood on that bat on the ball as you possibly can – it’s called the sweet spot. You hit it on the sweet spot of the bat. You hit the whole bat with the whole ball. That is the most amount of resistance that you can have and it’s the best hit you can get in the baseball.
If you have tiny bit of resistance you’ll get a foul ball, which does nothing. If you have no resistance at all, you’ll swing and miss and you’ll strike out. That’s another area where resistance is actually a good thing.
Let’s just take somebody that wants to go out and do an open mic but they’re really nervous about it. They’re in resistance, right? Well, let’s say that they see and noticed that they’re in resistance. They decide well I know, I can tell him mindful that I’m in resistance but I’m going to recognize that. I guess I should put recognized in there too, right – recognizing resistance. Even though I’m afraid to do it, I know that there’s no danger.
When we get nervous, the amygdala in our brain tells us that there’s something that’s threatening our life. Something was actually life threatening. So we got nervous. We feel anxiety. We want to go back to our old behavior, which would be not go to the open mic, right.
But then we’re in refusal. Then we’re refusing to feel the resistance, which is our second R. We got resistance and then we’re refusing to feel the resistance. So how do we not feel the resistance? Well you just don’t go. “I just want to go to the open mic.” or “You know what, I just want to offer that course to many people” or “I just won’t do this podcast” or “I just won’t sing that song” “probably shouldn’t tell this person I sing” or “I just want this…” or whatever, right? So we’re resistant to it. We get nervous. We go into that place where we rationalize their old behavior is really better. That’s where we tell our self that rational lies that it’s really, probably better not to do that. Then we breathe a sigh of relief because we don’t feel the resistance anymore, but we have refused to feel the resistance anymore.
So now, what if we recognize that we’re resisting and we become aware of it. We go out and we do it anyway knowing that there really is no danger whatsoever. So we have that experience and that creates the resilience to go out and do it again.
We can actually do this through visualizations, your mental rehearsal. We don’t actually even have to go out and do it. Although my suggestion is don’t avoid doing it and just do the mental rehearsal. Do the mental rehearsal as to augment, to complement, to support the actual going out and doing it.
If we give in to the resistance and we look at it as a bad thing, our refusal takes the feeling of resistance away but we also don’t move forward. If we recognize the resistance so that we’re not refusing to go forward, that develops tremendous resilience. So that we can continue to do that and we get in the habit and build the strength muscle to do it over and over and over again.
Perhaps I should call that the 4Rs, right. I don’t know. I just sort of coined that as I started this podcast when I thought resistance, refusal, and resilience. But you can go with resistance, recognition, refusal and resilient. Anyway I’ll play with it. But I think the point is well taken.
Hopefully that makes sense to you. Hopefully that offer you some insight, some ideas into resistance. A look and see where you might be resisting with your singing in your career in your learning and see if you can apply this.
Okay well, that’s enough for this one I hope this has served you well. I know I say this in the outro, but if you haven’t left it an honest rating and review, I would love to have that. I really enjoy doing this. I like to get as many people as possible. When I did the first sixty-two, sixty-three, now is number sixty-four and even though I’m kind of a closet marketer, I love marketing. I love business. I love all those things. I must admit, I haven’t really been awful at marketing this podcast.
I put it on iTunes. I put it on Stitcher. I put it on a few places. I put it out to my lists of subscribers, which you may be one of. If you’re not, run over to the InnerSinger.com and sign in for the free videos and what the heck you’re waiting for.
Anyway, I’m gonna start marketing and getting it out there because I know it’s very interesting. I am so committed to this. I really feel like it’s kind of at this point, responsibility to get into my hands with as many people as possible. If you can share that would be great. Give me an honest rating review.
Hope you enjoy this and I will say goodbye for now and I’ll talk to you in the next podcast. Bye bye.