1 Life Path | What You Resist Will Persist?
December 19, 20231 Soul Urge | Your Heart Desires INDEPENDENCE
December 20, 20232 Life Path | What You Resist Will Persist?
I’ve often used the quote: “What you resist will persist.”
And yet in the past months I have questioned that notion.
Yes, resistance as avoidance doesn’t just disappear or regress into the sidelines.
Whatever we want to avoid does have a tendency to persistently make its way back around.
Like when … you go out for one drink and it always ends up being five. (Resistance to practicing self-discipline)
Like when … you know that the way your partner verbally undermines you when you’re with friends or family isn’t healthy or in any way all right with you and yet you continue to let it slide. (Resistance to standing up for yourself)
Like when … you feel as though you’re marching into purgatory every day when you show up to work and yet do nothing to change jobs or improve your situation because, well, because. (Resistance to change or to taking action)
And while “What you resist will persist” is often true, I’m finding there are times when it isn’t true.
When in actuality, active resistance results in a reconfiguration of the persistent issue.
This form of active resistance can actually transmute and reformulate the issue at hand.
The key is “active intentional resistance.”
Let’s use the gym metaphor.
In order to build muscle, resistance training is key.
The more weight, the more resistance.
The heavier it is, the more attuned your body gets.
The more often you engage in resistance training, the easier it gets to endure longer period of time training.
The more reps you do, the stronger and more resilient you become.
If we carry forward with this metaphor, we can revisit the idea that “what you resist will persist.”
How can we think about re-thinking what we resist and why we resist it?
2 Life Path: The Heart & Soul
As a 2 Life Path, here is your usual point of resistance: SHAPE-SHIFTING IN ORDER TO PLEASE OTHERS
- You will always be met with people, situations, and experiences that pull you into conflicting situations. This can be within your family of origin, friendships, work colleagues, or intimate partnerships.
- Time after time you’ll be met with opportunities to navigate and mediate hostile or challenging circumstances that result in the need for your diplomacy, patience, and loving support.
- The coping mechanism is to over-give and be trampled on as you attempt to do everything for everyone OR to put up a combative shield and lack the ability to patiently see and understand other points of view.
RETOOL: As you’re met with opportunities to step into a healthy level of strong and clearly defined emotional boundaries, understand that this isn’t something to be avoided and you’re not being punished by continuing to have experiences that push you to define who you are and what your values are under any given circumstances. THIS IS THE POINT!
As you build your “diplomacy” muscles: Focus on strong yet supple boundaries, meet all engagement with curiosity about what makes other people tick, and back off from attempting to control and make everything “nice” for everyone all the time.