There's not really any Such Thing As Resistance

There's not really any Such Thing As Resistance

There’s almost nothing more annoying to me in the personal development world than the word “resistance.” It’s not because it doesn’t exist in entirety. I get what people mean when they use it. But it’s mostly leaned on by shitty practitioners who can’t get their clients to blinding accept their influence and want to blame something other than themselves for being fired.

Anyway, I digress.

The point I want to make here isn’t that. It’s that mostly there really isn’t such a thing as resistance. Not in the way we usually mean it. That framing makes it sound like there's a singular, unified you over here trying to eat the salad — and some shadowy obstacle fighting you on it.

That's not what's happening.

What's actually happening is that another part of you wants something different. And in that moment, that part is in the driver's seat. You're not resisting change. You're just inhabiting a part of yourself that wants something contradictory to what another part of you wants. There's no fight. There's just a different “part” of you fighting for airtime.

I'm about to start a GLP-1. And in the weeks leading up to it, I've noticed something kind of funny and kind of telling — the part of me that wants to do whatever the fuck it wants, whenever it wants, is throwing a little tantrum. It's flaring up. Eating things it wouldn't normally eat, at hours it wouldn't normally eat them, with a kind of urgency that doesn't quite match the situation.

It's as if that part of me senses what's coming and is getting its licks in while it still has the floor.

If I called that "resistance," I'd be missing the point. I’d be criticizing an important part of who I am – the part that wants freedom and irreverence and not to be held down by the weight of the status quo all the time, and trying to suppress it. But that is a bad idea because that part is a part of me with its own logic and its own motivations, doing exactly what it's always done. The medication isn't even in the picture yet and it's already reacting to the idea of being quieted. And the more I do that, the more it’s going to fight back.

(Just a brief note that we are speaking in metaphor here. There is a neuro-analog for “parts” kind of, but I am also making little characters within myself and that is mostly a device to understand the dynamic. I could get into a whole diatribe about the word parts that I will spare you from.)

The thing to understand is that if you treat behavior change as a willpower problem, you end up in an exhausting fight with yourself. You assume there's one real you and one fake you, and the work is to make the fake one shut up. So you push harder. You shame yourself. You make rules. You break the rules. You feel bad. You start over Monday.

That cycle isn't a sign that you're weak. It's a sign that the model is wrong.

Real change isn't about defeating a part of yourself. It's about working with who you are at the level of identity, so that the parts of you that want different things start to come into a different kind of agreement. The version of you that eats well, moves your body, takes care of yourself — that version isn't fighting off a saboteur. That version has just become someone for whom those things are more on-brand than the alternative. The other parts don't go away. They quiet down because they're no longer the loudest voice in the room.

This is why behavior change is identity-based, not willpower-based. Willpower says, "I'm forcing this part of me to behave." Identity says, "This is who I am now, and that part of me has less to do or will get its kicks in a different way.”

The next time you catch yourself doing the thing you said you wouldn't do, try this:

Stop calling it resistance. Stop calling it self-sabotage. Stop calling it failure.

Instead, try to “organize” it. What does that part want? What is it afraid of losing? What has it always done for you, even back when its job made sense?

You don't have to fight it. You just have to stop confusing it for the whole of you. The more you can see it as one part among many, the more room there is for a different part to come forward and take the wheel. (Like Jesus. Just kidding.)

Cowboy takeeeeee me away. Fly this part as high as you can into the in-shape blue.