When I was a kid my mom would have to remind me to clean my room, and every blue moon I’d get a wild hair and deep clean that sucker—so much so that when she came back in to check on me, I had every item I owned strewn across the floor, hunting the perfect organizational home for it.

But then two weeks would go by and I’d let stuff pile up again.

For the next 20 years of my life I assumed all of life was a battle against my own procrastination, that success lay on the other side of disciplining myself to achieving perfection.

And for sure, there is within all of us a Passion that, when riled up, conquers armies, and at the same time a Resistance to hard work—and we have to navigate that.

But this is not an essay on doing hard things, on overcoming Resistance and becoming “great.” That battle is common to us all and is simply referred to as procrastination, or something along those lines. The antidote to procrastination is very simple. (Nor do I like the word “greatness” but that’s not for here.)

Rather, the next few columns will seek to show how the real battle we face isn’t in encouraging Passion and overcoming Resistance, but in how we must become Master and Commander of both of them.

You have people on both sides of the spectrum. Some work so hard they forget to enjoy life and the Passion just absolutely mangles the life they’ve been given, while others give in to Resistance at every turn and just seem to have an excuse for everything in life, quelling what potential they ever had in excuses.

Most of us are a unique blend of both. We tell ourselves the story we want to hear about ourselves (and we are always the hero of our story, let’s be honest), but if our lives were projected onto a screen there would be a kaleidoscope of Passion and Resistance. 

The part of our lives we turn over to the Passion is what we are proud of, what we feel like we haveto work hard to get. This is the part of our story we are best at telling—waking up early, going to the gym every day, working over 40 hours a week, etc. etc. 

The parts of our lives run by Resistance is what we are ashamed of, and those parts we either shove under the rug, or, more treacherously, we retool to place the blame on someone else.

Passion is good because it is what drives us past exhaustion into the history books: world’s longest solo flight, world’s longest bombing mission, world’s deepest solo dive, world’s tallest solo free climb. 

Passion is bad because it’s also driven us to neglect our kids’ ball games, run people over, take up addictions to nurse our overworked minds and bodies back to health. It’s warped our views of reality to such a degree that when the market crashes people jump off skyscrapers, days before they could have made a full recovery.

At the very moment you tell yourself Passion is making its biggest defeat against Resistance, your marriage may be slipping onto the back-burner along with everything else you fought so hard for against Resistance. 

What happens when Passion leads you to the terrible end you fought Resistance so hard to overcome?

Here’s the thing: resistance isn’t the enemy, it’s only the enemy when pitted against Passion. It makes a great straw man. Get out of here lazy man, we say. But what if Resistance is helping us keep the balance of our lives in tact? What if you should skip the gym today to love your daughter more or spend time with your wife this morning or fix the light fixture that bothers her so much?

See, what if Resistance tells you not to put your employees and coworkers first today because it’s too hard and “not necessary” so you overcome it, full of Passion, but then months go by and your Passion is captured by another goal, so you go back to neglecting your employees and coworkers?

What happens when winning feels like losing and Passion leads you down the very path Resistance tempted you with?

Come back next week.