Episode 20: It Is Useless to Resist

Can you  name the famous movie character who gave us this line? If so, kudos to you! If not, stay tuned and it will be revealed to you before I finish today!

Over the next few episodes, we’re going to explore three powerful tools for freeing yourself from unnecessary stress and suffering. They are: Non-Resistance, Surrender, and Radical Acceptance. These are different approaches to the same core truth—Which is that life becomes easier when we stop resisting reality.

Think about what it is like to swim against the current versus the current - it is so much easier when the current is behind us instead of against us - that is exactly what I mean when I say that life is easier when we are not resisting Reality -.

Let’s start with words from one of my favorite thinkers, Byron Katie:"The only time we suffer is when we believe a thought that argues with what is." "If you want reality to be different than it is, you might as well try to teach a cat to bark. But no matter how hard you try, the cat will just look up at you and say, 'Meow.'” 

Teaching a cat to bark is the ultimate exercise in trying to change something that you cannot change - and have no control over - 

Let's Take a moment to think about How many things we might resist on a daily basis. The weather, your child’s behavior, what your spouse does or doesn’t do, politics, genetics, health, the traffic, your appearance, grocery prices, your own emotions, and any general wishing that people or things would be different or should be different.

We all do it, and no matter who we are, resistance doesn’t change reality. It only makes life more difficult - If you have listened to Episode 5 on the 50/50 - you will recall that life is 50% positive and 50% negative - so if you are resisting reality you will be resisting at least 50% of the details of your life- that is a lot of energy spent being mad, frustrated, or disappointed about things you cannot change- it feels like you are carrying a weight on your back while you swim against the current of the details of your life. Which is why the sooner we stop resisting - what is - the sooner we feel better.

Have you ever heard of the Law of Non Resistance? It  is one of the 12 universal laws - It teaches that when you resist something, you actually give it more power. 

This means that the energy you put into frustration, judgment, or avoidance only amplifies the very thing you don’t want. Tony Robbins says, ‘Where focus goes, energy flows.’ And that’s exactly what happens when we resist something in our lives—we pour our energy into the struggle. 

Think about the last time you resisted a situation, whether it was a difficult conversation, an unexpected setback, or even the weather. The more you focused on how ‘wrong’ it was, the bigger the problem seemed." 

Carl Jung coined the phrase, What you resist, persists." and Eckhart Tolle - added Whatever you fight, you strengthen. 

No matter which phrase you like the best, they all tell us that the things we resist get more energy - and that energy creates more of what we don’t want. 

One of the most fascinating examples of this is judgment - I have noticed that the simple act of judging something negatively makes me more likely to actually create the very thing I am judging others for. It is kind of like the mote and the beam parable which teaches us that when we are so busy focusing on tiny mistakes or problems of others we miss the giant mistakes or problems in ourselves. 

This is why learning to stop resisting reality is so important, it will- mean that we learn to stop giving our attention and focus to the things we don’t want - which frees us up to shift our focus more to what we do want.

- Let me share a couple examples of how shifting our focus changes our results: 

Example 1: Circumstance: Reading a Story in the News 

🔹 Resistant Thought: "People should be kinder." → (Feeling) Anger, disappointment → (Action) Complain, look for more evidence of unkindness → (Result) I become unkind myself. 

🔹 Acceptance Thought: "People can only know what they know." → (Feeling) Compassion → (Action) Get curious, seek understanding, take action where I can → (Result) I contribute to kindness rather than amplifying negativity. 

Example 2: Your Child Comes Home Crying from School 

🔹 Resistant Thought: "I just want them to be happy." → (Feeling) Sadness, frustration → (Action) Try to fix, dismiss their feelings, get upset with whoever hurt them → (Result) Prolonged unhappiness for both of us. 🔹 Acceptance Thought: "They are entitled to their feelings." → (Feeling) Presence, calm → (Action) Listen, validate, allow them to process emotions → (Result) They feel supported and learn resilience. 

In each of these examples - the circumstance - or the reality is the same - but the way we approach the reality with our thoughts creates completely different results - 

This is the difference in resisting reality versus accepting our reality. It is also why I can tell you that you can love your life more today than you did yesterday without changing people and things in your life . But changing your mind in relation to them creates entirely different feelings about your life. 

My favorite visual for thinking about the law of non resistance is a mountain stream. I love to hike -and when I am out hiking, you will almost always find me taking time to sit by water - and running water is my favorite. I love the sound of it, I love the coolness of it, I love watching it - I love everything about it. I bet you have been near mountain streams yourself. When you picture water flowing down a mountain and it hits a rock, what does it do? It flows around it right? It doesn’t stop and argue, saying, “This rock shouldn’t be here!” It simply moves around the obstacle, always finding the path of least resistance. If we had to listen to water arguing with every obstacle in its path, it would certainly not be peaceful to sit near itt. And that is exactly what happens in our lives. It is not that there are obstacles, difficulties, or things we don’t like in our lives that saps our peace, it is that we resist and argue with all of these things in our own minds and frequently out loud! This is incredibly energy draining and peace disrupting.

Think about how it is when you see someone inside of their car alone - and you can see them gesturing and yelling - but you can’t hear them- They are arguing with the reality of traffic - but the only peace that is really compromised is the quiet that could have existed in their own car. 

If we take our cues from the mountain stream, instead of resisting life’s difficulties, we would move through them with grace—acknowledging what is and flowing forward. 

And the result is instantly more peaceful and enjoyable. 

My best mental hack to help me notice when I am resisting reality is to sort things out in my mind to figure out if I have control over something that I am bothered by. Because I have learned that so much of our suffering comes from trying to control things that I simply cannot control.

So I ask myself: whose business is it, really? And it will fall into one of three categories. 

🔹 My business: How I respond, how I show up. 

🔹 Their business: Their thoughts, actions, and emotions. 

🔹 God’s business (or reality’s business): Everything outside of any one’s control. 

These three categories help me sort out where I have power to act very quickly, and the power to act is the only control I have. Whenever I catch my clients resisting their own realities, I help them quickly sort out their control by asking: 

Whose business are you in right now? Or Whose job is this to manage? 

It is a fantastic practice to notice when you feel frustration or tension and then ask: "Am I arguing with reality? Whose business am I in? Or Whose job is this to manage? If you can’t control it is not your job.

And if it is not your job, stop resisting what is and move on - By simply noticing, you will create space for a shift that allows you to move on - or flow around the obstacle that is robbing you of your peace. 

I have time today to give you some real life examples of how dropping the focus on what you don’t like and don’t want - helps bring more peace. 

I had a client who constantly resisted feeling anxious. Every time she felt overwhelmed, she’d say, ‘I shouldn’t be feeling this way! I need to get rid of this anxiety.’ But what we were able to notice together was that every time she told herself she shouldn’t be like she was - she just felt more anxious about being anxious. 

Through coaching, we worked on accepting the anxiety—allowing it to be there without fighting it. We made her anxiety be a rock in a river bed and when she noticed it - she learned to name it, describe it, locate it, and then just allow herself to see it, but not get attached to making it mean anything except that it was a vibration in her body, and she could go on with the flow of her day and thoughts without being scared of it. It just was - until it wasn’t. 

And just like any area of life - when she stopped giving it so much attention - it and allowed it to just be - the feeling lessened. She could move through it instead of being stuck in it. 

There is probably a feeling that you are more likely to get stuck in than others - we all have our own favorite indulgent emotions - what is yours? What would it be like if you didn’t let anxiety, fear, or overwhelm mean anything was wrong? It is just a feeling that humans feel - and it can be acknowledged, but it does not have to mean anything - you can just flow on through it? Would that change the way you experience parts of your life? 

Another client of mine was struggling in their marriage. They had a long list of ways their spouse ‘should’ be different. They wanted more affection, better communication, and a stronger emotional connection. And while those desires were valid, the constant resistance—wishing their spouse were different—was keeping them stuck in frustration instead of love. 

We worked on shifting their thought from ‘My spouse should be more affectionate’ to ‘I can love them as they are and show up the way I want to.’ And you know what happened? When they dropped their resistance, their relationship improved. Not because their spouse changed, but because they stopped needing them to." 

The list of shoulds we have about our partners, our family members, our coworkers, or anything in our life really - are likes rocks in the river - the more we believe that people and things should be different - the less peace we have - 

Using the sorting technique of whose job it is to manage what should be different - helps you practice letting go of your resistance to what is - and leads you to a more peacefully experience those you want to love better than you currently are. 

If your energy goes where your focus tells it to go - let's practice energizing the things we like about the people in our lives, instead of the things we wished were different. 

Let go of what is not your job to control and control what you can - which is yourself - and how much you love others. 

Resistance is like carrying a heavy weight, while you swim upstream, simultaneously trying to teach a cat to bark. —it only exhausts you. 

But when you release the need for things to be different than they are, you free yourself to take inspired, effective action. 

Byron Katie - said when I fight against reality, I lose. But only every time.

The choice is up to each of us how much we want to fight with reality - but the outcome is the same for all of us - it robs us of peace, makes life more difficult, creates friction and distance from the people we love,  is exhausting, and after all of these negative results- we will still lose - 

So cue the tagline - It is Useless to Resist - Darth Vader used these words against Luke Skywalker as he tried to turn him to the dark side - but I am using them to lighten your load! So stop resisting you must - if you want to love your life more today than you did yesterday! 

Thanks for  spending your time with me today! The topics of non resistance, surrender, and acceptance are particular favorites of mine. Let me know in the comments what you think about them. If you have someone you know who is tired from resisting what is - send them this episode right now. It is a simple thing - that you can control- .

Talk to you soon!