Resistance

By Liz Temple

Whenever we work on self improvement, resistance is guaranteed to appear in our lives.

It happens when we make a decision to make a change. If we find it very hard to make changes in general, are pessimistic or have a cautious nature, resistance  will show up very quickly, usually in the form of thoughts about how difficult or impossible making the changes will be, feelings of hopelessness and powerlessness, fear of the new and unknown, feelings of mistrust of our and others’ abilities, uncertainty and doubt, frustration and fear about lack of success , self critisism and guilt, feeling it’s pointless, an inability to concentrate on the task at hand and a great deal of procrastinating behaviour or time wasting, doing things inefficiently, having to make a great deal of effort.

If we are more positive in general, things tend to come more easily to us because of less resistance to begin with, but we may have more difficulty keeping a hold of what we get if we have a fear of losing what we have. Impatience and discontentment with what we already have can create tension that gets in the way of success too.

Other signs that we have resistance could be body sensations, any behaviour that slows down the changes for the better. Tiredness, tension headaches and other stress related physical sensations, spacing out and daydreaming could be related to resistance.  Or any new demands made on us that also slow down the change. i.e. the diary suddenly doesn’t allow for the 30 minutes exercise we promised ourselves each day, or a bill for a lot of money appears when we’re saving up or working on having more abundance in our lives. Being late for important appointments could be another sign of subconscious resistance, even though our intentions on a conscious level are sincere and positive. Even our car breaking down or anything that puts obstacles in the way of our ideal life of ease can be seen as a sign of resistance if we believe in such things.

It’s a subconscious tension. i.e. tension we are not aware of that puts the ‘brakes’ on our progress towards our self improvement goal. It could be seen as ‘sabotage’, as resistance ‘hides’ from our conscious awareness and ‘puts a spanner in the works’, so to speak.

Possible reasons for the ‘brakes’ going on will be from beliefs about what’s possible or how difficult it will be, about our own abilities, a fear of what’s next, about our entitlement to improvement and about how the change will impact on us and others. In other words, it’s all the objections we throw up: conscious or unconscious to being successful at getting whatever we want, like a better figure, better income, mood or relationship.

These have their origins in the past. Beliefs taken on from others, inherited traits, decisions and conclusions made during a difficult time, often about our own abilities, our place in life, our ideas about what is possible, how we might cope with success, whether we could trust others or ourselves, or whether we deserve to receive help or good things in our life. In fact, most of the resistance, once we know our goal is what we really want, has to do with what we think of ourselves and our abilities, and followed by a mistrust of others to a lesser extent. Then impatience and discontentment could get in the way as it creates tension that might stop us sitting back and planning things properly and objectively.

When does it Show?

For some people, it is there nearly all the time. For example, with people who are pessimists, ‘overthinkers’, people with low confidence and self esteem or people with mental health difficulties.

For most people it will show up at points of change, when we decide to improve our habits, change a relationship, job, way of living or diet.

The most resistance will come when we aim high at something well out of our comfort zone to something we’ve never dreamt of doing before. We could just be kidding ourselves that we can achieve that dream, but we still might be able to achieve it if we deal with the resistances that will be obvious at this point. For example, if we decide to aim for earning 5 times what we’re used to, up comes the thoughts like, ‘It’s impossible’, ‘I’d have to work so hard I couldn’t do it’, ‘I’m not worth that much’, ‘I’ll end up losing it somehow knowing my luck’. But guaranteed if it’s in us, it’ll show up when we aim high.

It will also show up for specific areas of our lives, but not for others. For example, we could put the brakes on very quickly when trying to lose weight, but can be very successful at our career.   

We could keep resistance down by taking baby steps towards our goal, just taking our time and increasing our comfort zone gradually. If we’re working on something like losing weight, or improving our mood, we could just aim for doing something towards our goal one day at a time. This could work as long as we keep at it, but a long journey of baby steps might mean more chance for resistance and sabotage aspects like hopelessness and impatience taking hold again at various points along the way.

Advantages of Dealing with the Resistance

So dealing with resistance will make all our tasks easier. First recognise that resistance exists. Often it exists for goals and tasks  we don’t need it to be there for. Realise if it wasn’t there for that task or goal our tasks would be easier. Reassure our resistant parts that we wouldn’t need to let caution or resistance go for everything. Recognise that caution can still be used without the resistance (i.e. the fear and tension) as this is sensible behaviour, and we don’t need to keep a hold of fears or insecurities to be cautious and think things through before we do tasks towards our goal.

For example, if we critisise ourselves a lot, we might think its useful for making sure we do a good job, but we could still do a good job (in fact, a better job) if we stop doubting ourselves and just intend to do a good job. In fact, self doubt is one of the major causes of resistance.

So when we set a goal that we hope to achieve, dealing with the resistance will make our work towards it easier and much quicker.

For example,  suppose we are working on losing weight. We know exactly how to do that, in the form of latest proven diet and exercise programme but we’re not successful because of resistance. 

Working with that which is conscious

We could sit down and put on a piece of paper all the advantages to going on the diet, and all the disadvantages, and that would give us a starting point to our resistance.  We could put this into ‘What if’ statements.

‘What if’ I go on a diet and lose weight?’ (General Statement)

‘What if I don’t fit in with my friends any more?’        

‘What if I fail once again?’

‘What if it brings more attention my way?’

‘What if I make all that effort and I just put it all back on?’

‘What if that slimming club is just taking my money?’

‘What if it just causes me stress and I lose my temper?’

What if I get more problems because I lose my comfort food?’

So now we know some of what’s getting in the way, but its like the tip of the iceberg, but a start. The subconscious main part is still not in our awareness.

Why subconscious work is easier, more effective and quicker

We must be mindful that we won’t get to all the possible aspects in the subconscious, like incidents buried deep and possible traits inherited or brought from past experiences that create tension around food and nurturing. Perhaps a low calorie or deficient diet in the past may have created a tension around food that we cant identify as logical but it manifests now as cravings for high calorie diets.

Ways to Approach Resistance

First, identify that which is conscious.  Write a list of carefully and honestly considered disadvantages to getting what we want that is individual to us. This will be the most personal and accurate pointer to our conscious resistances.

Then consider whether any of the following may be contributing:

 Tension About Myself:

 What if I’m not capable of reaching my goal?;

What if I don’t deserve it or need to do certain things first to be entitled to my goal?;

What if it’s not possible for me?;

What if I can’t cope with success?;

What if I fail?;

What if I make a fool of myself?;

What if I’m successful then lose it?;

What if I run out of energy?.

About Others:

What if others hurt me or let me down?;

What if I hurt others or let them down?

About Happiness /Life:

What if life is not supposed to be happy or easy?

About My Purpose:

What if there’s no purpose in my life?

What if my purpose is to suffer?

Then assume there will be other reasons we are unaware of that we can address with subconscious work.

Now if the resistance is high (For example, if we’ve tried to get this goal a lot before and failed, or if we get strong emotions when we think about it like panic), we would be best to address each individual aspect on our list. As we do this with whatever way we choose, other objections will inevitably show up to deal with too.

If we are doing this ‘traditionally’, we will probably need a counsellor or therapist and a lot of time to examine each aspect and reframe the way we see it.

There are many energy therapies that will deal with these conscious aspects very fast, for example, EFT, TAT and Ho-oponopono. Most will have some effect on the subconscious resistance too. Even simple intention to ‘let go’ or the use of positive affirmations and visualisations of the goal will reach those subconscious aspects. Zpoint and Connect and Trust (By this author:) are particularly effective to reach subconscious aspects. Try also the free recording at the top of the page.

If our resistance is lower, we could concentrate on more general aspects, and use our favourite energy therapy.

Suggested aspects to concentrate and work through:

Doubts and fears about myself, others, what’s possible, being successful.

Impatience

Dissatisfaction with present.

General Suggested Formula for Self Help Energy Work

Go through the medium sized list and obvious ones that come up for your individual work. ‘Tune in’ to each aspect and use your energy therapy of choice.

Next, ‘clear’ on general resistance or objections.

And concentrate on the good feeling you want and use your energy therapy, which will reach the resistance very quickly and ‘clear’ the objections or tension with your energy therapy.  

Summary

Dealing with resistance will not be necessary for all goals but particularly for difficult ones that may have failed before or ones that we recognise lots of obstacles coming up for.

The other possible side effect of working on resistance to one goal is that it may cover the resistance for others too, so when we set a new one, resistance won’t be a problem, but if it is, then we can go through letting go of the resistance for that one too.