What is Resistance?
Resistance stops you from having, doing and being all that you can in life.
It’s the feeling you get when you feel like you “have to”, “must” or “should” do something – when you want things to be different – and is experienced as negativity, usually as a judgement.
Resistance comes from and creates separation because wanting things to different makes you feel like you aren’t already good enough, making you want to protect yourself by resisting.
We think that resisting protects us and keeps us in control but it actually makes us more controllable because we close ourselves off. It’s like a closed, defensive existence that limits our capacity to change and limits the flow of life.
It is a limiting belief that you create to protect your other limiting beliefs, a shield that stops you from truly living.
You think that your resistance stops you from suffering but it actually causes your suffering and limitation. The situation always is as it is – neutral – it’s your resistance that causes you to feel stuck. When there’s no resistance, there’s no stuckness and you are free to change and improve.
I used to feel that I could never be a brilliant student so I resisted the possibility that I could improve my grades to protect that belief. I felt that I should improve but that made feel even more helpless and stuck because I believed that I couldn’t. I resisted working because I felt that it was pointless, that I could never do well academically. My resistance to challenging my belief held it in place. When I dropped the resistance, I was free to adjust that belief and dramatically improve my academic results.
Your resistance is often far worse than the situation itself and makes you reactive, limiting your ability to handle what is going on and truly improve the situation.
In essence, resistance is non-acceptance and it keeps you stuck.
How Do I Stop Resisting?
Firstly, you can’t try to change resistance. That’s just more resisting.
Don’t try to be in any state other than the one you are in right now because trying to change what already is creates more resistance.
Begin by acknowledging the resistance. Notice it. Become aware of it. Feel it. Don’t think about the resistance, feel it. Feel how conflictingly stuck it feels. Become fully aware of what you are feeling at the moment of resistance. Fully feel it. Go into it. Welcome it. Allow it to be there, just for now. Fighting it hasn’t made it go away so welcome it just for now. When you become fully aware of the resistance, you’ll see how trivial and pointless and empty it is.
Often that will be enough to make it dissolve and release.
Another option that you always have, in any situation, is to accept.
Accept. Accept the resistance. Allow it to be there. Welcome it. Don’t resist the pain and stuckness, allow it to be there. Accept it fully. Your non-acceptance creates it, your acceptance makes it evaporate and dissolve.
As soon as you accept the resistance and accept how you feel right now, your acceptance alchemises your resistance into peace.
Acceptance is entirely a perceptive process made within. You accept your feelings about the situation and what is right now, not the situation itself. You can still change the situation and take action but any action will come from a place of freedom, free of the limitation of resistance.
Finally, either take action or don’t. Decide to do something about the situation or don’t. Indecisiveness will create more wanting to change what you’re experiencing, more resisting.
Why is Non-Resistance Beneficial and Crucial to Living Free?
Non-resistance gives you freedom. It doesn’t mean that you do nothing, become a passive walkover or accept undesirable situations, it just means that you don’t create inner conflict about what you’re experiencing.
Non-resistance means that any action you take is non-reactive and comes from a place of power and flexibility instead of from a place of defensive, closed-off stuckness.
Resistance distorts our perceptions and distracts us from our majestically resplendent and limitless nature.
When you stop resisting, life becomes deliciously more real, you become more real, and more simple. You no longer need to protect yourself. You stop layering distorted protective clouds of resistance over reality. It would seem that you become defenceless without the “protection” of resistance but it is only through non-resistance and acceptance that you can live truly free, immersed in reality, completely unleashed.
Unleash Reality
Alex
Nice post man, this is what you are looking for:
http://meidell.dk/archives/2006/12/19/brians-threaded-comments-159/
GET some images in here, brighten the place up a little
Cheers,
Glenny
Thanks man, just what i was looking for.
brightenin’ it up right now
looking awesome.
Dude! Great summary man. Really well done. Clear and to the point, and covers anything important about the subject. 10/10
Mikey
Socialflo to the ho
!
Socialflo is going to own the universe.
working on the posters now.
lordage deluxe
Great stuff Alex. I’m looking forward to following you with this fantastic idea!
Thanks Ibrahim, i’m really enjoying working on it and building this. appreciate it given how amazing and distilled your blog is.
keep well and check back soon
alex
Yo man, congratulations.
Cool articles. You write ‘em and I’ll read ‘em.
I’ll have a blog up soon too. Looks like a proper community is forming here.
Check out my site: http://www.howtoapproachwomenhq.com
Ciao!
*marked as spam*
now you gotta make the traffic happen. glen’s got a good traffic article at http://www.pluginid.com
still wanna get the clip of that interview we did.
making things happen proper
alex
Nice stuff, well thought
Haha is this geeee as in the GEEEE?!?!
never knew they had internet in zam-beee-aaaah!!
where you? what you up to?!
keep well man
alex
I call this “full awareness without judgment.” It does put one on the track to self-knowledge and realization of full potential. Great observations!
Karen
Hey Karen,
Really accurate description… and definitely a key part of being free. i’m inclined to say a state to strive for but if there’s striving then there’s effort and that clouds the awareness.
i think it puts one on track definitely and also KEEPS one on track too
Great post again Alex!
Another trick I read somewhere (but I forgot who said it) to acknowledge resistance and weaken it, is to do it out loud. When you feel it, say it, name it, separate it from your self. “It says it can’t be done” is an example of what I use. It works wonders for me.
Hope I am clear enough
Thank you Jean.
I really like that trick. I’m aware that awareness of it weakens it, so to speak, but never considered speaking it out loud. Makes it more and less real at the same time. power stuff.
thanks for adding
best
alex
yo
nice site bro, I found it through the comment you left on my site.
Have you just started it recently? If so, good luck and all the best. I think blogging is getting harder and harder these days and it’s a real battle for attention – it’s not much but I’ll post a link for you on my site.
Re resistance, it’s probably just semantics but you’ve talked about avoiding resistance but no mention of seeking resistance. Take almost any activity (weight lifting, sport, debating, whatever), you will get the most growth and improvement out of seeking resistance. Weight training you will increase the weight to improve, competing you will improve most by playing with people better then you.
Take your chess post for example, if you play someone far below your level you might always win and feel good but won’t improve. On the flip side, play someone better then you and you may initially feel like you suck or engage in other limiting beliefs but it will force you to grow and improve.
Imo resistance is a good thing, not a bad one.
Hey Jackmo.
Yeah, started pretty recently. Definitely a struggle due to competition but i think it’s a good thing. makes me work harder to be better. not to beat everyone but for the feeling of really making something happen. i don’t care if there are a million other blogs out there to compete with, i’m not interested in even being top 10, i’m a be number 1. because i know that i can do anything. so can you, so can anyone but most people never will because they don’t really want to.
thanks for the link love, appreciate it
you make a really good point about resistance. kinda what i mean about competition being good. i meant the self-created resistance, that kind of resistance that you talk about is great, and it makes you grow. but don’t create resistance where there is none. you can create encouragement by looking at other people in weight training and wanting to be big like them but don’t wish you weren’t small – that’s just unnecessary resistance and it’s counterproductive. i guess that’s it – don’t create unnecessary, counterproductive resistance
re: the chess example, definitely true about always aspiring up and taking things next level but there’s no need to create resistance if you play somebody better and lose. no need to feel stuck. maybe it’s easy for me to say because, given i’ve come from being so low i really have a sense of triviality about people who are good at things. to me, if somebody does better than me or beats me at chess or whatever, it doesn’t mean to say that i’m not good enough or anything, it just means more time. they spent more time or spent it better. i can do anything, so can they. doesn’t say anything about who you are so no need to create resistance. use losing as drive but don’t make yourself feel bad about it.
i don’t think resistance is a good thing but using the situations where people usually feel resistance can be really helpful.
thanks for the comment, really inspiring and good to hear some honest feedback. so rare these days.
all the best
alex
Great reminder for me. Well written and straight to the point. Sometimes our resistance to what is is really causing the suffering, not the situation itself.
This title is IRONIC.
Ha ha ha!! I only read the article for the “stopping it” part — I already know resistance, all too well. Very enjoyable read. Thanks, Alex, Graeme, and all commenters!