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Key points
- It's human nature to push back against things we don't like or feel like we don't need.
- Our resistance is often automatic and unconscious.
- Cultivating awareness can help us let go of our inner tension and embrace more opportunities to learn and grow.
Life brings us learning opportunities every step of the way if we are looking for them. This morning at the dentist, having my teeth cleaned, I learned more about the nature of active resistance—when we don’t even realize we are resisting! The hygienist cleaning my teeth was pushing against my bottom lip. Without thinking about it, I was stiffening my lip and, in effect, pushing back against her. She asked me to please relax my lip, and when I focused on doing so, I apologized for making her job more difficult. Her response to me was, “It’s really OK; it’s human nature to push back against something that is pushing on you.”
What a poignant lesson. Yes, it can be human nature, but it isn’t useful to us. I was making her job more difficult, delaying a process I really don’t fully enjoy until it is time to get out of the chair, and not even recognizing I was doing it until she brought it to my attention.
This is what happens to us in life so often. This was a physical example, but don’t we do this all day long with mental and emotional occurrences that happen to us, too? I don’t like what you are doing, so I resist you. I blame you for creating a disruption in my life. I push back, metaphorically or physically, against your actions so I can get you to do something differently. Or an event happens that I wasn’t expecting, and I don’t welcome it as a sign the Universe is telling me something; I push back and try to undo it or fix it or find a way around it. Just like my stiff lip, this happens to us several times throughout any given day.
When you get to the end of a day, and your shoulders are tight, your teeth are clenched, your stomach may be in knots, and you have a headache, that’s often where your body is telling you that you have spent the day resisting and pushing negatively against whatever has been happening. In hypnosis sessions, I often tell clients to become aware of the tension they are carrying. Just like the hygienist did for me, once you become aware of it and focus on it, you can choose to release it. Without focus and noticing what you are doing, you are destined to keep that stiff lip and not realize the damage it is doing.
It's hard to greet things we don’t really want with open arms.
I don’t enjoy having someone work in my mouth; however, I fully enjoy the feeling of a clean mouth and smooth teeth. While the process is happening, I am inadvertently pushing against what I don’t like. This can be natural, but we miss opportunities to practice relaxation and stay open when we don’t take another path toward openness and relaxation. If I fought the whole time, I wouldn’t end up with the clean mouth I enjoy. I wouldn’t get the ultimate result I was hoping for.
During your day, you will encounter many things you think you don’t like or don’t want. We subconsciously spend the day labeling what is good and what is not so good for us. You might like the sunny day but dislike when the rain clouds roll in. You might like the person who smiles at you in the checkout line but not like the neighbor who walks by you without speaking. Or, conversely, you might hate when someone tries to speak to you and prefer the person who ignores you and is quiet. People have their preferences and spend their days reacting to them.
What if each day you embraced whatever opportunity came along for you to practice relaxing and staying open to learning and growing? What if, instead of inadvertently pushing back on something you don’t like, you allowed yourself to open up and question what you could do differently? What if you stayed conscious about your reactions to things so you could see where you label and judge, and perhaps prevent yourself from growing and changing?
It starts with awareness.
Take one day when you are willing to catch yourself 3-5 times throughout the day for just 1-2 minutes and become aware of your physical state, your breathing, your mental attitude, and your thoughts and feelings. Check in with yourself. See where you might be reacting or responding without meaning to.
If you recognize resistance, choose to deliberately let it go. Relax the shoulders. Focus the mind on something positive. Release the tension. When you become conscious of this, you can start to do it without even focusing on it throughout the day. But it takes practice and attention. Give yourself the chance to move away from the resistance that you might not even be aware of and toward peace and openness to whatever comes along.
I will never love going to the dentist as much as I love the outcome from being there, but from now on, I will try to be aware of my body and reactions as I sit in the chair, and focus on those instead of my dislike of being there in the first place.
