There is a devil in our lives. He is smart too. You see, he does not rely on trickery or deception of any sort to derail you. All this devil does is use resistance, your natural desire to not do something that is hard, against you. He harnesses your weakness and sets that weakness in front of you all nice and tempting like. Resistance wants to stop you from doing anything ambitious. If you listen to resistance you are failing.
We have the best of intentions, but our plans get laid askew by the worst within us. If there is one thing I have noticed about life it is that you need to work infinitely harder to achieve something than to fail at something. Failing is the natural path, rising is the hard-fought way. Further, giving even one concession to resistance means a backward slide that requires twice as long to recover from.
There is not a day that goes by where I don’t want to just stop. Every day I reach some point where I have to either give up or fight on. You think that with time this would become easier, that habits would strengthen my resolve and make overcoming resistance easy. But it never does. Resistance always shows itself in new and creative ways, but your response to resistance defines the sort of person you are.
What we can’t do is give up because life got a little hard.
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Our negative responses to resistance manifest in many ways. Do you overload yourself with more work and say you’re “too busy” to continue doing that one thing that’s pressing against you? Maybe you’re “too tired” to talk about your relationship right now, “have a deadline” and can’t work on your own projects, or maybe “now just isn’t the right time.” Resistance feeds off of excuses and justifies failing.
But, I’ve got news for you. Each one of us fails at something every day, as a man, a role model, leader, spouse, or father. Life is not about failing, life is about failing quickly and finding a new way to succeed based off of your prior experiences. We do not need to get things right the first time. We can screw up and do better the next go around. What we can’t do is give up because life got a little hard.
We villainize or glorify failure so much that we look towards it as an obstacle that provides life changing information, or we think failure means we are a failure. This is resistance’s hold on us, and we either don’t act out of fear of failure, making up a bunch of sad excuses why such and such couldn’t be done, or we get so OK with failing because of the valuable life experiences learned that we never really give our all in what we do. We think things are a win win either way.
Resistance is self doubt, which is why no matter how great your habits and how hard you fight resistance it will always exist.
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As someone who has been on both the winning and losing side of things, I can tell you beyond a doubt that winning is always better. So, how do you win every day? How do you overcome the easy path resistance lays out for you?
Resistance is self doubt, which is why no matter how great your habits and how hard you fight resistance it will always exist. Over time, resistance does fade, but it never disappears.
Accept right now that life is a battle with resistance in many forms, and those that find a way to overcome the self doubt and contrived barriers to success win. So, what are you doing to overcome resistance? For me, I have noticed two things that have led me, when not used, to dark places, and, when used, to my brightest days: gratitude and desire/passion.
When I find ways to practice and explore these things daily I’m always strong enough to defeat any shape that devil of resistance takes. Maybe you have different tools. Whatever you do, don’t stop. Even when things are good, when your life builds momentum, when everything is going your way, don’t stop. I have also found that during these great highs of life, resistance is still in your shadow and waiting to find a chink in your armor. So find what keeps resistance out of your life and practice that daily. Put resistance in the corner, where it belongs, and never doubt that you gave life your all.
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