10 ways to act in resistance to yourself

Our energy serves as stored fuel for whatever we want to do.

We kind of realise it and become aware of it especially when there is no energy left inside us, and we feel like dragging our feet in anything we think of doing.

We also know exactly how it feels when we do not want to do something. We oppose it. We resist. We spend time fighting against something or someone. 

But what does it mean to act in resistance to yourself?

It means to expect something is still going to happen irrespective of how impossible it became now for that to happen. It means to cling onto a scenario not anymore plausible. It means to spend energy in a futile manner, unable to be able to produce the results desired.

Here it is the most often ten examples of situations when people, without realising, are acting in resistance to themselves. I will let you check for yourself each one.

💠 CASE 1 - You had a past experience which turned to have an unhappy outcome. You are now going through a situation which seems similar, but circumstances are totally different. Instead of focusing on the new circumstances, you focus on reliving the past emotional experience. 

The main result of your focus will be your need to take any necessary steps for this time you will be OK. So, you respond in hyper vigilance, and take decisions of over exaggerated protection: you build a shield around or may redraw, irrespective of the fact that nothing is really threatening you know. 

These decisions and their implementation consume your current mental, physical and emotional resources. Your act puzzles the people with whom you are now in relationship: they will see something is not working, they will perceive reluctancy, some sort of untold expectations, even rejection, or a form of trust gap leading to diminished trust or to your inability to be heard or trusted, and menacing the odds for you to accomplish your objective.

💠 CASE 2 - You recently had a setback and failed to accomplish something. You are totally disappointed and frustrated for the time lost. Instead of focusing on what is still possible to you in the given situation, you continue to maintain your focus on the recent loss and cannot let go of it. 

Your, most often unaware, decision is to entertain finding the guilt or faults in yourself or others, to be angry or disappointed with yourself or others, as opposed to concentrating on how you can improve the recent outcome. 

This resistance looks like clinging on to some results that will never materialise in the form expected by you, while you continue to erode your energy in futile thinking rather than investing it in the construction of a valid way-out.

💠 CASE 3 - You could not reach a certain result because, totally out of your control, circumstances changed dramatically. There is nothing to be done, except to build a new plan.

Still, mostly unaware, you still keep on holding that scenario that will never be possible since the initial conditions are long gone. This resistance is like still expecting something that you know cannot happen anymore.

Very similar to CASE 2, this is also futile expenditure of your energy instead of investing it in the construction of a valid way-out.

💠 CASE 4 - You decide for a slight change in your life. Let’s say you want to introduce more movement in your life and decide to take a walk for 30 minutes, each day, after work. After all it is spring, the weather is beautiful and you decide to come back home walking instead of taking the bus. 

And, for one week, everything goes quite well. However, one day it rains, and you decide to call  a taxi. And suddenly, you re-discover the benefit of using a car: it takes only 7 minutes instead of 45 when walking. And, the next day, instead of focusing on the new benefit you wanted to build for yourself - a more active life - you fall back on the old benefit of being home early, irrespective of your new intention.

💠 CASE 5 - You manage to enter into a situation which is far away of being satisfactory for you. With or without your contribution, you found yourself in something that can be described as a “mess”. 

Instead of investing time to clear the mess, untangle yourself from it, and transform it into something valuable for your and your environment, you continue to remain attached and complain about either yourself or others who pushed you in that direction. 

💠 CASE 6 -  You have clear objectives, many of them grouped along the same direction, and so many passions. 

You cannot say NO to other directions and believe your well being is tied from calling all the opportunities that come to you, irrespective how strategic are these for your life. This makes you spread thin over too many directions and to be difficult to materialise or finish well or thoroughly anything.

💠 CASE 7 - You have clear objectives and maintain a too strict way to look on how to get there. You might be given chances to meet your objectives, however - given your too strict way to judge situations, you may not recognise different situations as opportunities for you.  And unless you open yourself to see how you can use those situations to bring you closer to your objectives, you will discount them as not being what you search for, and will say NO without giving it much thought.

💠 CASE 8 - You are introduced by a person you trust to an opportunity. It sounded good to you when it was initially presented by your good friend, and because you trusted your friend you said YES. Still, you could instantly feel not happy after that YES, but you could not explain it well to your friend, and therefore gave in. 

Days after you said YES, you start understanding that in fact it takes more from you than initially estimated, and that you will not get in return what you initially had in mind. You realise that you should have listened to your gut feeling. Doing that thing means to not be in integrity to yourself, saying now NO means to disappoint your friend. Or this is what you might believe. 

💠 CASE 9 - You had an idea which everyone agreed is brilliant. Now you implement it, but suddenly, it feels like pushing very hard for it to happen. And because of that, you stress all your relationships, and create or entertain lots of pressure around you - including in yourself - just to make this idea happen.

You cannot believe that something that is still possible requires so much energy and focus. And instead of thinking of ways to simplify, you look at how you can push more. Definitely that is just energy burnt instead of energy invested.

💠 CASE 10 - You decide to show your full support and offer a lot of contribution to a person who did not asked for it. Unaware of your part, the other person may not acknowledge your contribution or may not be even aware of it. Seeing this approach from the other, you may judge that person as lacking respect, and may start resenting them or holding grudges against them. As a result, you will spend a lot of time in negative thoughts and feelings, and will consume your emotional resources.

All these ten situations above reflect decisions to act you take based on your automatic response when emotionally triggered. Knowing your preference to (re)act in each of such cases brings a lot of awareness about who you are at your essence.

Which are your daily little decisions you take or choices you make daily, reinforcing the way you behave in resistance to yourself? 

This is not a simple exercise. Sometimes it takes someone from outside to see. If you want to build a plan and weed out your automatic ways to behave in resistance to yourself or if you need to have a nice chat over a cup of coffee and discover the way the above cases act in you, let me know. 

Let’s do this exploration in your free discovery call and let’s bring some clarity in it!

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