One of the greatest sources of personal suffering is resistance. Resistance can take many forms – resisting your past suffering, resisting past relationships, anger over the past, anger at certain people, sorrow over people you’ve lost, fear of the future, etc…
Resistance aimed at things that you cannot change is self-sabotage, because, in the end, what you resist persists. The more you think about something that you wish had not happened, the more it occupies your mind. The more you think about somebody you hate, the more the image of the person takes control of your life.
Resistance falls into three different categories – resistance to the past, resistance to the future and resistance to the now.
1. Resisting the future.
Some examples:
“I really don’t want to speak in public tomorrow.”
“How am I going to ask her out? I’m so nervous.”
“I’m so stressed out about that job interview.”
And the totally destructive “What if…”
You can end that sentence however you want. What if she says no? What if I throw up in front of the class? What if I fall? What if I fail?
If you’ve been doing this in your life lately, congratulations! And while you’re at it, why not just give up on everything and stay in your room all day? That way, you won’t lose anything. Except your life, because if you think that way, in the “what if” resistance shithole, you’re not really living. You’re merely trying to avoid some imagined future event that may happen. You may as well not do anything!
Anytime you’re resisting some future event, you’re screwing yourself. You know how many times I’ve done this in my life, starting back in school with the speech in the front of the class? I can’t even remember.
There is no use in resisting a future that you cannot avoid. If you do this, you ruin your present, too. And there is also no use in avoiding doing something that might be good for you just because something might go wrong. If you don’t ask a girl out, you’ve already lost. You said no, so the girl didn’t have to. If you don’t go for what you want, you lose by default. Is that what you want?
2. Resisting the now.
Usually, people try to resist negative emotions that come up. Resisting the emotions of the present moment makes them get worse. The more you resist negative emotions, the stronger they get and the longer they torment you.
I’ve done this one too. My experience is like this – resisting anxiety increases anxiety, resisting pain increases pain.
Accepting and feeling the emotion without labeling it allows it to float away. The more intensely you resist your emotions, the more tightly they become attached to you. This is not theory – I know this by noticing that I do it, even today.
3. Resisting the past.
Mulling over negative experiences from the past is a great way to ruin your life. I’ve done it plenty of times myself, so I know all about it. Let’s assume that you see a movie, perhaps a horror movie, and you don’t like it. But you keep re-watching it in your mind all day in all its gory detail. This is what thinking about the past is like. Resisting the past is irrational, but even people who know this continue to do it. Why?
Letting go doesn’t seem possible sometimes. Especially for sensitive people. Sometimes it feels like you can’t let go. But if you don’t believe that you can let go, then how can you let go? It’s impossible. Self-sabotage!
So… How do we end resistance? The way to become more free of resistance is by practicing acceptance. Just say “it happened,” I can’t change it now anyways. Otherwise you let your past destroy your future.
When you feel emotions, just feel them without resisting them. The future? Why bother stressing out about it? It’s not here yet.
There are practical ways to get over resistance. I’ve already referred to some ways in the following articles, please check them out if you actually want to make changes in your life and overcome resistance:
There are plenty more related articles on this site. Check them out. You will become more free in the present moment, more free to create a better future and more free from living in the past.
Konstantin.
