Hello!
Just in case you missed it, you can read Part One of this series here.
Today we’re diving deeper into what it means to be in a state of resistance, and how I personally found my way into a state of true growth.
Now let’s dive in!
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When Resistance Is All Around You, Resistance Will Be Your Default
What I witnessed growing up, were all of the people around me living in a state of constant defense of their current world views, strategies and ways of solving problems that didn’t work as a way of giving themselves the hope that ONE DAY if they just keep trying, if they just keep pushing, if they just keep doing what they’ve always done - that EVENTUALLY it’s going to work, reality will bend to their will and they will get the outcome they wanted exactly how they WANTED to get it so that they don’t look foolish and so that they can maintain their current world view OR living in a perpetual state of complete abdication of responsibility, believing themselves to be totally incapable of affecting any change in their own circumstances and waiting for life to change on it’s own/someone to rescue them/something to miraculously shift their circumstances into what was desired so that they wouldn’t have to feel like they were doing anything wrong or that they may have played any kind of role in their own suffering.
I watched as those around me denied the results of their efforts over and over again - going on the same diets and losing and regaining the weight over and over again, trying to fix their relationships using the same style of communication over and over again, attempting to find better employment while engaging in the exact same work strategies in multiple different work environments - perpetually applying their same logic, reason and ‘this makes sense to me and it ‘should’ work and when I do it ‘right’ it always works FOR A WHILE - it’s just me and my lack of willpower to stick to the plan that makes it fail’ mindset to their problems, only to find themselves in cycles of repeated experience.
I watched on as people applied their life strategies over and over again, had them ‘work for a while’ or really not work at all, and then rather than this leading to the revelation that the strategy simply was wrong or was incomplete, people doubled down. People going out and looking for others for whom their current strategy seemed to work and using them as evidence that they are right. I watched as they denied the evidence right in front of them that doing what they were doing wasn’t solving their problem - inflating the ‘successes’ and minimizing the failures - but at the end of the day really just denying reality in general because they were never able to say ‘even though others think this is right, even though I can find evidence of this seemingly working for others, it doesn’t actually work for ME in real practice and real reality.’
I watched as people would DEFEND their viewpoint, their strategies and their ways of doing things that weren’t even working for them - often with the underlying energy that if they could just convince everyone AROUND THEM that what they were doing was right, that it was going to work, that it really WAS the answer - that in THIS it was going to make it work.
I watched as people truly seemed to believe that the reason they weren’t getting the results they wanted was because OTHER PEOPLE around them were saying it wasn’t going to work. I watched as people would again gather as many sources of people who believed what they believed around them as ‘proof’ that their strategy was right, as though reality would eventually bend to the majority votes. I watched as people blamed those who were saying that what was being applied as the answer wasn’t true FOR THE BAD RESULTS THEY WERE GETTING, as though it was the dissent that was augmenting the outcomes.
I watched as people would bend themselves into all sorts of intellectual knots to try to ‘prove’ that what they believed was true was true, so that they would NEVER have to open to the idea that they might be wrong and that they might have to change.
Then again on the flip side I watched as people attempted to solve their own problems, failed and rather than going into defense or rather than even ATTEMPTING to solve their own problems moved straight into a stance that their problems were fully outside of their control. I watched as people blamed bosses, coworkers, spouses, genetics, the environment, God, the government or whatever else was around to be pointed at as the ‘cause’ of their issue - only to FULLY resign themselves to having nothing to do with making it better.
I watched as people looked at their life challenges as ‘lessons’ from God on faithfulness and waiting things out. I watched as people said that they were being ‘tested’ and thus just needed to pray, believe and hope longer and harder and eventually God would bless them with a totally new life. Healing. Transformation. A lottery win. I watched as the people around me threw up their hands and said that they were stuck so long as so and so didn’t change. I heard people say things like ‘well, in my childhood this happened so there’s nothing I can do now.’
I learned first hand that when we are struggling, the ONLY two options are to proclaim that we ALREADY KNOW WHAT WE’RE DOING - we just need to do it more, harder, for longer, again, we just need to convince more people that what we are doing is right and get to a place where everyone is in agreement - and once we get there, all will be well. I watched as people truly believed that their strategy was going to work eventually - they just had to keep doing it. If this didn’t work, the other strategy was to admit defeat. Own no part in the problem. Surrender all responsibility and to put forth NO effort to change anything that may look like owning any kind of part in the outcomes so as to protect themselves from any external or internal blame, shame or belief that they may have some power to make things better or different.
Defend or deny.
Keep fighting for what we have or lay down completely.
Those were the only two options.
Coming Out Of Resistance And Into LIFE
Of course, being the ‘black sheep’ of the family, I was never someone who could go along with either of these two ways of thinking.
You see, my family in particular was ALL ABOUT the above strategies. Deny, deflect, pretend it’s not happening and claim that there’s nothing we can do were the unofficially family motto’s. My not going along with things wasn’t just frowned upon, it was in every way, shape and form something that made me a target of attack, shame, blame and guilt - and it was something that no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t stop myself from doing.
I grew up with a deep sense that life SHOULDN’T be the way it was for everyone around me, and that it shouldn’t be this way for myself.
You see, I experienced a lot of pain in my life, just like everyone else does.
I had a chronically ill body that was sick all the time. I was often left out in social situations. My home life was a mess and my caregivers were often in turmoil in a way that spilled over and affected me and my sister.
I grew up around a lot of adults who would divulge their problems to me because I was ‘mature’ for my age and often connected with them on more of a friend level than anything (which I now know was pretty inappropriate and boundary crossing, but it is what it is.)
I grew up having problems that the adults in my life couldn’t solve - the pain of my body, the emotional pain of being so different and of course the lack of support from my caregivers and other community members because of their preoccupation with their own issues - and for a while in my early childhood this led me to feel very helpless.
I was driven into a state of constantly begging for help and not getting it. Feeling abandoned. Isolated. Like I was trapped in a life I was never going to be free from. I remember spending long nights in bed praying to God to save me, fix me, change my life, deliver me - I remember being in a state where I saw what I was going through as a ‘test’ and where I believed that if I was just a good enough Christian that God would one day reward me with a magically transformed body, social life and home world.
But as I grew, this seeking solace in faith started to wane, as I started to gather the awareness that I wasn’t as helpless as I was being led to believe I was via the people around me.
Rather, I started to figure out that there WERE things I could do that DID make a difference in the outcomes I was getting in my life. I started to learn about diet and nutrition - and this was my first fore into the world of personal empowerment.
I started to experience for myself that there really WERE things I could do that had an actual IMPACT. I realized that I could try things and if they didn’t work, I could try something else. That I didn’t have to stick to one path or another - but that I could take one philosophy from one person, mix it with a tool from someone else and combine that with my own lived experience and what I was learning through that into my own alchemy of solution that actually moved me in a new direction.
I started to practice yoga and expand out of the Christian mindset that I was personally taught that everything was based on faith and just ‘believing’ and again started to adopt a new mindset that we had some power, some say, some influence and some impact via our thoughts, words and actions on the experiences we were having.
Through this, as I grew, I started to really feel like there was no reason we should be stuck in our problems.
I started to see that solutions existed.
That by admitting what WASN’T working, we could actually find NEW ways that DID work.
I started to experience for myself that experimentation was possible. That if what I thought would work for me in my diet didn’t, that I could keep looking, keep trying other things, keep searching until I found something that did. I started to learn flexibility. Adaptability. I started to see that stepping outside the confines of my current belief systems didn’t lead to the hell I had been told it would - but rather it led to having more tools, more resources, more answers, more ways of approaching life that could work better than the ones I had.
I started to realize that for myself, admitting I was wrong didn’t lead to eternal damnation. It didn’t lead to being stuck forever. It didn’t trap me.
Rather, I started to really SEE that the more I could admit when something wasn’t working, the more I was able to shift and find something that did.
That to admit something didn’t work wasn’t admitting that *I* was bad, wrong, a failure or sinful - because the things I tried, the ideas I held, the thoughts I believed in weren’t ME. They weren’t who I WAS. I could let them go, I could change, I could grow, I could change my mind, I could learn - and this didn’t make me terrible, instead, it led me to more and more freedom every time.
I naturally evolved myself into someone who was easily and readily able to admit when I was wrong, when I didn’t know, when I was playing a role in my own suffering - because all of the above HELPED ME find solutions that led me to a better life.
Now I have to admit that this part of me that was never able to go along with consensus reality when consensus reality didn’t work was ALWAYS a part of my personality.
I grew up as someone who was never able to pretend that things were working when they weren’t. From a very young age I found myself getting into trouble with my parents and other authority figures often - being told that I was the REASON that their plans didn’t work out, that I was the reason their diets didn’t work, the reason their relationship conflicts continued, the reason they weren’t getting what they wanted in life - because I was always ‘pointing out’ what they were ‘doing wrong.’ I was never able to ‘follow the script’ - something my caregivers literally said to me ver-batum.
I was told constantly that I was ‘making people feel bad about themselves.’ That I was harsh, mean, shaming and that everything would be FINE if I would just stop talking.
This earned me a reputation of being a ‘bad guy’ because I couldn’t just tell people that what they were doing would work eventually, or that their pain was fully out of their control and not their fault - because I simply didn’t see it that way.
I couldn’t lie and say I thought people were doing the ‘right thing’ when what they were doing perpetually hurt them and those around them, when what they were doing never got them the results they wanted and when what they were doing ‘made sense’ on paper but didn’t pan out in real reality.
I couldn’t lie and say I believed that everything was just ‘a test’ or some practice in deepening faith because that too didn’t appear to be real to me. There was just too much evidence I was collecting that we had power, that we could change things, that our actions mattered for that.
So that’s what I said. That’s what I did.
I still spend a LOT of time praying.
I still believed deeply in a higher power.
But again I didn’t look to this higher power to justify what I currently believed, nor did I see this higher-power as a testing figure that was one day going to swoop in and magically change everything for me.
Rather my relationship to the higher power I felt a resonance with was shaped more like a mentor/mentee relationship.
I went inside myself to connect with this higher power to find answers. Steps. Solutions.
Whenever I was stuck, scared, didn’t have answers, didn’t know where to look or didn’t understand something - I turned to the higher power for help in understanding. I turned to the higher power to show me where to look, to tell me what steps to take, to help me understand what I was missing so that I could put the pieces of the puzzle in front of me together. I started to treat this higher power as a partner that was going to help me find my path - and that’s what happened.
I didn’t believe that God was going to bend reality for me anymore. I no longer sought out magical solutions or overnight transformations. Rather, I saw this God as a figure who knew the PATH. Who could teach me how reality worked, and I realized that it was my job to change MYSELF to match reality.
That if what I was doing wasn’t working, it wasn’t going to work. Reality wasn’t going to change for me. But that didn’t mean there wasn’t a solution - it just meant there was an answer I hadn’t seen yet.
I saw that it was my job to continually learn, grow, adapt and change - it wasn’t realities job to match my expectation.
Within this, I personally discovered that there was no shame, guilt, blame or condemnation in being wrong, not knowing or not having the answers. Rather I continually found that the more I went to this presence within me with my problems, with my stuckness, with my lack of awareness, the more love, compassion and gentleness I experienced. I started to really see that there was KINDNESS and COMFORT available in the surrendering of ideas that didn’t work and in the admission that I wasn’t seeing something. I never felt shamed, rather I always just felt loved, supported and guided to my answers.
This is what shaped my relationship with being wrong, not knowing and having to take responsibility for my role in my life.
I learned that I had power, I learned that life was all about admitting where things weren’t working so that we could find something else, I learned that admitting where I didn’t know wasn’t an END point but a beginning, I learned that letting go of ideas and what I thought was right had nothing to do with my morality, worth, value or how good or bad I was - but rather it was a way of finding the truth.
I learned that re-adjusting my world view didn’t mean the end of the world. That while it was scary to question what I had always believed, while it was destabilizing to allow myself to look at BIG ideas that were the foundations of how I made choices and allowing myself to deeply question them if they weren’t working - that in the end, if I kept going, if I stayed open, if I continued to search instead of shutting down or looking to double-down on what I already believed in a way that had me AVOIDING and DENYING aspects of reality - that eventually I was able to see something NEW. Something broader. Something more useful. Something more effective.
I went through YEARS of deeply questioning the entire system I was brought up in - questioning the religion I was raised in, questioning the cultural values I was taught, questioning what I was told I had to do/become/not do/not be - and there were many, many years of sleepless nights, feeling totally lost, not having anywhere to ‘lie my head’ so to speak - and it was hard, lonely, challenging and seemingly never ending at some points.
But in the end - it always led me to freedom eventually.
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Let’s take another break here, and come back next week for more on this.
I’d love to know if any of this resonates with you? How are you feeling as you read these words? Share with me anything you’d like!
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