The Skill That Changes You

Spoiler alert: It is not discipline, focus, or willpower.

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“Resistance is ….. the signal that you are already fighting reality. Productivity begins the moment you stop trying to win that fight.”

— The Productivity Manifesto, Directive 1

Stop Fighting Resistance

I rejoined Twitter this week after years away.
It is a different world.

Most voices in the productivity space are busy telling you what to do.
The right app.
The perfect routine.
The five-step system that made them so successful.

External tools are useful.
We all need them.
But when a resistant mindset is running the show, the result will always fall short.

If mindset is mentioned at all, it is the same tired refrain:
“Discipline yourself.”
“Use your willpower.”
“Push through the resistance.”

But that advice leads to the same place every time:
burnout, guilt, despair, shame.

Because the real obstacle is not external.
It is internal.

Resistance, not a lack of tools, is what stands in the way.
You are not failing because you lack discipline or willpower.
You are stuck because you are saying no to what is.

Every “This is boring,”
every “This shouldn’t be happening,”
every “I might not get the result I want”
is resistance and adds friction.

That inner no drains your energy before you even begin.

The trap is not resistance itself.
It is your relationship with it.

Each time you judge yourself for hesitating, you tighten the spiral.
You add pressure.
You add shame.
You add drag.

The harder you push, the harder resistance pushes back.

You wait to feel confident before acting.
You wait to feel motivated before starting.
But waiting is the mechanism that keeps resistance alive.

What you call procrastination or distraction is not a flaw.
It is the side effect of fighting what you feel.

The skill is not to crush, override, or ignore resistance.
It is to neutralize it.

Neutralization is the first quiet shift.
It begins when you stop labeling the task as good or bad, easy or hard, fair or unfair.
You see the event as it factually is and nothing more.

When you stop loading the moment with meaning, resistance has nowhere to attach.
It may still arise, but it has nothing to feed on.
The noise lessens. The charge fades.

Neutralization makes space for frictionless productivity to become possible.
It presents you with no reason to not take action.
It is the pause where struggle loses its footing.

“You do not have to eliminate resistance to move forward. You only have to stop letting it decide what happens next.”
— The Productivity Manifesto, Directive 7

Try this.

Pick one task you have been avoiding.

Notice the story you have been telling yourself about it.
“This will be awful.”
“I am going to bomb this.”
“Everyone will think I am incompetent.”

Now strip away the story.
Describe the task in purely neutral terms.
Remove the drama.
Remove the predictions.
Remove the judgment.

Instead of: “I have to make this impossibly awkward phone call.”
Say: “I will call Alex at 2 PM to discuss the timeline.”

Instead of: “I need to write this stupid presentation and I am going to mess it up.”
Say: “I will create five slides about Q3 results.”

That is how you start.

This shift, from charged story to neutral fact, is the doorway.

Once you see the task clearly, the next step becomes obvious.
Not easy, maybe. But obvious.
And obvious is enough to begin.

Start today.
Pick that task.
Identify the story.
See the task for what it really is: a neutral event..

Welcome to the Frictionless Mindset.
See what you can do when you stop fighting yourself.

Cheers—
Alessandra

October 14, 2025   |   Read Online

The Feeling That's Stealing Your Focus

And the simple shift that gives it back.

 

Alessandra Derniat

 

 

 

“Say I am angry and anger owns you. Say I have anger and you take the reins.”
The Productivity Manifesto, Directive 4

I spent years white-knuckling through difficult feelings, thinking that was strength.
It was not.
It was just exhausting.

One shift, from being your feeling to having it, changes everything.

When we are the emotion, we lose the space to respond; we can only react.
But when we have the emotion, we can feel it without fusing with it.
It becomes something within us, not something we are.

 

💡 Language reveals and reinforces identification.

Saying “I am sad” fuses identity and state; our whole being becomes sadness.
Saying “I have sadness” acknowledges the same emotion without surrendering authority.

We can feel the feeling, hold it, examine it, even act in alignment with our values while it is present.

 

⚙️ Why This Matters for Productivity

Acceptance of feelings begins here, not by controlling, erasing, or stomping on them,
but by reclaiming ownership of how we relate to them.

And that ownership is what keeps productivity frictionless.
When we resist a feeling, energy leaks into self-management, energy that could be spent creating, deciding, or finishing.

Resistance shows up in subtle ways:

  • Arguing with what is: insisting things should be different than they are.

  • Replaying stories: looping the same internal narrative instead of taking action.

  • Tightening the body: bracing against discomfort rather than breathing through it.

Every ounce of attention spent fighting emotion is attention stolen from our work.

But when we accept what is present, I have anger, I have frustration, I have fear, our energy is freed for action.
Focus returns.
The work moves forward, not because the feeling disappeared, but because it no longer runs the show.

 


Every ounce of attention spent fighting emotion is attention stolen from your work.

 

🌧️ How to Practice “Having” Your Feelings

Imagine standing in the middle of a storm.
Rain slants sideways. Wind howls. Branches snap.

When you are the storm, you are flung around by it.
When you have the storm, you notice the rain on your skin, the sound of the wind, the crack of branches, but your feet stay planted.
You can feel everything without being swept away.

Try this:

  1. Name it out loud.
    When a feeling hits, say: “I have frustration.”
    The language matters. Feel how using “have” creates the space to experience it cleanly and clearly.

  2. Locate it in the body.
    Notice if there is a physical sensation Where does it live? Heat in the chest? A tight jaw? A pulse in the hands?
    Noticing the physical sensation anchors the experience. It becomes tangible, not abstract.

  3. Feel it fully.
    Let the feeling move. No resistance. No judgment. No rush to fix.
    This is not always easy; some feelings grip hard.
    What you will find though, is that when you make the momentary effort to experience it fully, it will morph and shift and resolve. You will have ‘digested’ the feeling, not simply dismissed it. Feel that lightness.

 

You can feel every emotion you have without letting it define who you are or how productive you are.

 

From that grounded place, productivity glides, frictionlessly.
The quality of our output depends not only on time or tools but on how we engage with and relate to our inner state.
Your system will work better when you have a clearer emotional field within yourself.

 

🌿 The Takeaway

The next time a feeling surges, pause before you name it.
Notice the first impulse to say I am.
Then shift it: I have.

That single word redraws the boundary between you and what you feel.
Making that shift reclaims your innate awareness.
You are not the current; you are the riverbed it runs through.

And here, quietly, lies the secret of true productivity.
Our capacity to act depends on our capacity to stay.
To stay productive, even when discomfort arises.
To keep moving through the task while the emotional weather changes overhead.

This week, try this.
Practice having your feelings instead of being them.
Let them move through like weather, gray, then bright, always changing.
Feel them fully. Stay rooted.
And keep your attention on what matters most.

Cheers,
Alessandra

 Want more like this?

The Productivity Manifesto dives deeper into the mindset behind frictionless action.
Read Directive 4 in full, or start from the beginning to rebuild your relationship with resistance, one shift at a time.
👉 Get the book on Amazon →

 

Go Deeper

If today’s newsletter hit home, here are two free resources waiting for you:

The 3-Minute Resistance Check
A quick self-assessment to spot exactly where resistance is draining your productivity right now.

Directive 1 (Free Chapter)
Straight from the book! The complete first directive from The Productivity Manifesto. Free, unabridged.

👉 Get instant access here.
(Once on the site, scroll down to sign up and get your copy.)

Fighting the right battle is the foundation of everything I'm building with The Productivity Manifesto, a different way of thinking about what really prevents us from being as productive as we want to be.

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