If You Can't Love the Feeling, Love the Resistance

My kind of rule of thumb is like, go for the joy. Like, I don't want the resistance to change, how can I meet it most joyfully?

Welcome to The Art of Accomplishment, where we explore how deepening connection with ourselves and others leads to creating the life we want with enjoyment and ease. I'm Brett Kistler, here today with my co-host Joe Hudson. Today we're leaning into resistance, how it shows up in all its forms, the path to developing a healthy relationship with the resistance, and all the fun and foibles we can expect along the way. In self-discovery practices, there's this idea that the path to deeper freedom is to go through our resistance. This often sets us up with an adversarial relationship to our resistance, as if all it does is needlessly hold us back. The other day I read an essay by David Whyte on the word denial. I highly recommend giving the entire essay a read, we'll link to it in our show notes, but his closing lines really caught my attention: "To live in denial is to be in very good company. Denial is the crossroads between perception and readiness. To deny denial is to invite powers into our lives we have not yet readied ourselves to meet." So, Joe, David's treatment of denial rhymes with something you say a lot, which is, "If you can't love the thing, love your resistance to the thing." If denial is one form of resistance, seeing it in this light seems like a good pointer toward learning to love it, So what exactly is resistance?

It's an interesting thing what David Whyte is saying. I think it's incredibly profound and I think it needs to be said because it's usually the relationship people don't have with denial, right? So it's typical that people are like, "You're in denial." They're not like, "Oh cool, you're in denial." It's just something that you don't hear. And so, you know, from the perspective of In a war with yourself, you always lose. Like, to see the benefit of the other side, to not take the other side personally, to see the other perspective really allows you to have less of a war with yourself. And so from that perspective, I really appreciate what David Whyte is saying, and I really appreciate that that's needed often. And I would even suggest that David Whyte also probably say, oh yeah, there's a time to see through your denial as well. So I think that the main thing that resistance is, is not, not being at peace with what is. I think that's a great way to describe it on an intellectual basis. On an emotional basis, it usually amounts to not wanting to feel something. That's usually where resistance, um, where it comes from in the emotional body. And then in the in the nervous system body, there's just a, there's like, there is some fear there that resistance usually comes along to, even though it might look like anger or frustration or, but for me, the most important thing to think about when I'm thinking about resistance is it's a natural step in transformation. I get very excited when I'm working with somebody and they get resistant, 'cause I'm like, awesome. This means we're on the right path. And it's their path, it's not my path. It's not what I think they should do or where I think they should be. It's like impartiality is incredibly important. And the other wisdom of what David Whyte is saying is that it's like, when they're ready. So what's interesting is we're always ready for a new perspective or an epiphany or seeing through something, but maybe it's not that and maybe it's not now. Or maybe you're seeing through something slightly different. So no matter how wise your guru gets, or the person you're listening to on a podcast gets, they can't be more wise or have more knowledge about you. And no matter how wise you get, you don't get to have more knowledge than the person you're talking to about them, or more wisdom. And so it's really critical to allow them their paths and not want them to be any different.

And it seems like it just gets really easy to judge resistance. Like, if we're not feeling something, then we could judge ourselves for not being ready to feel it, or we could try to make ourselves ready to feel it when we're not.

That's resistance.

Yeah, that's like a meta resistance.

All of that is, yeah, all of that is just an, what is it, like resistance in sheep's clothing, you know, or resistance in wolf's clothing. All of that is just compounding. You know, it's like you can't fight your way out of a war.

How can we tell when we're ready? Like, if we're feeling resistance, there must be some part of us that feels that it's not ready to experience or feel this thing that we're resisting. And how can we know if we indeed are ready?

Yeah, I don't look at it that way. I look at it as part of the transformation. Meaning, like, if you watch, like, a cell divide, there's resistance there. If you watch a tree, you know, slowly over time, their limbs will move to find light. It's like there's resistance in that. If I took all the resistance or all the tension out of your body, you would die. It's just evolution requires resistance, it requires tension. And so to me, it's not something like to get in a good relationship or to get in a bad relationship with, it's just to be with the relationship you're in with it at that moment.

What are some other ways that that shows up? And personally, what kinds of resistances are there and what leads to them?

Mostly what leads to the different forms of resistances that come out is just what you've learned, you know, what you were brought up with. So, you know, if checking out was the way that you resisted feelings that you didn't want to feel, then you check out. And if fighting is the way to resist it, you know, being evasive, being defensive, sleeping, you know, there's infinite ways, becoming super cerebral. You know, so there's all sorts of ways that resistance shows up in the work that I do, or just in a normal business meeting. You see it all the time in business meetings, you know, people having resistance. And then you see other people get frustrated with their resistance, right? And that instead of like, oh cool, they're resisting something, what do they know? What is it that they're, what is it that doesn't say, yeah, let's do this in them? And where's the wisdom in that? And maybe only 1% of it is wisdom and 99% of it is ignorance, but there's some wisdom in the resistance. There's always some. So it's not so much about knowing when it is good and when it is bad, or knowing when you're ready or when you're not ready. It's really like, how do you be with the resistance without resisting that? And let, and then whatever movement happens, which is, again, what I think is so brilliant about that David Whyte poem is it is, one very clear pointer on how to stop resisting the resistance. Or in, you know, what you quoted me saying, it's like how to love the resistance. If you can't love the thing, love the resistance.

Yeah. Or it seems like what you've been describing just now is even a curiosity or a wonder. And that seems to kind of turn things on their head a little bit. Like if we see somebody else in our lives who is resisting something, often our tendency is just to point out their resistance and be like, Like, stop resisting, making it bad, you know?

Yeah. In other words, change to make me happy. Change. I want you to change, Rick. No, to make me happy.

Oh yeah. Yeah. We've all done that.

Yeah. Yeah, we have.

Yeah. It's kind of interesting to think about it from that different perspective of just being curious. So their resistance isn't bad. If they're experiencing resistance and we want there not to be resistance there, then that is a pointer to our own resistance. And there's a lot there to be curious about.

Yeah. And there's also like this beautiful thing is like encourage their resistance or encourage your own resistance. Like the one way through is to like get out of the Chinese thumblock. And one way is to go into the Chinese thumblock, if you know what I mean? Like there's, I often, if I'm resisting something, I'm in that struggle, I just struggle all the way, just go all the way into it. And I can exhaust the resistance. It's like, or listen to it completely, let it fully have its voice. But there's this kind of weird thing that happens with resistance is like in some level, there's a way in which we don't think we have the tool, the new tool we need, 'cause whatever we're not wanting to change, whatever we're not wanting to feel, there's a way that we've been dealing with it that's worked so far, maybe not great, but it's been working. And so to change that, I was like, well, what's gonna happen? And then the other question is what's gonna happen to me? And if you're not listening to that wisdom, if you're not listening to, okay, so I stop, you know, yelling at my dog every time it shits on my carpet, well, then am I just gonna have to live with shit? You know, and oftentimes, like, if you listen to that resistance, you find out what tool is gonna be there or you can address, yeah, yeah, this part of you is disappearing. This part of you is wanting to transform and what do we see comes next? And can you invite it back if you decide that this part of you wants to be back or wants to stay?

Yeah, bringing some of this back into my experience, a lot of times I'll experience some resistance around procrastination. There'll be something that I want to do.

Wait, hold on a second. Is procrastination resistance?

Well, there's a lot, there's different kinds of resistances in it. Like, like for me, I mean, procrastination could, I think, happen for a lot of different reasons. And I think that would be a fascinating episode to get into.

Yeah.

But like, for me, it often shows up as this like fear of feeling the failure of not getting it perfect. And then there's the resistance to my not doing it. And then there's this, like, there's this fear that if I just, if I go into that resistance in the way that you said, then it'll just take over and I'll be stuck in it. But what you're saying is like that it'll exhaust. So I could just go all the way into the resistance rather than setting up another opposing resistance that just balances it and keeps it stuck.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That, that can work if it's fully allowed to move. But the question I would ask is like on the procrastination, what is procrastination without any resistance in it? Not any resistance to it, but like if you feel the procrastination in your system and then you, feel what procrastination becomes if there's no resistance in the procrastination. What happens?

Well, sometimes it changes into—

Not sometimes, right now.

Oh, right now.

What happens?

Well, I'm not feeling procrastination right now 'cause we're recording a podcast actively at the moment.

Right, but if you did, bring up that feeling. Yeah, yeah. There's something you're procrastinating right now.

Yeah. Yeah, so feeling into a thing that I'm procrastinating, there's just, becomes a feeling of, like, there's a sensation in my body of, like, a little bit of anxiety. And then the anxiety kind of just moves and becomes some kind of energy, like, kind of the get up and gozies.

Yeah, and so what is that experience if there's no resistance in it?

I mean, it feels like the impulse to do something.

That's what makes me ask the question, what is procrastination without resistance in it?

Yeah, it's like the experience of procrastination has the impulse to do something, otherwise you wouldn't be actively thinking you're procrastinating it.

Exactly. You could not be doing stuff. I'm not doing stuff right now, but it doesn't feel like procrastination. But as soon as I feel like I should be doing it, well, then there's, the feeling of procrastination that comes.

Yeah.

I'm not launching a thermonuclear missile at this moment, and I don't feel like it's procrastination.

Well then, take it up. Then fire ze missiles. From this conversation, I'm feeling that the thing that I resist in procrastinating is the fear of whatever consequences of getting it wrong.

Yeah.

And that fear, if I'm not resisting it, is actually like an excitement about doing something new.

Right. And so now what's the wisdom in the resistance? If you love the resistance, what's the resistance in it?

It seems like the wisdom in the resistance is like, you know, I'm doing something new and when I'm doing something new, I would benefit from being aware that I might have, take steps that have unintended consequences and I can just be aware of those things.

Exactly. And so there's some wisdom there. And if you incorporate that wisdom into whatever's happening, that is like the next step of the transformational process. So there's a step of resistance, that's part of transformation, and then there's a step of the incorporation or the integration of that resistance is also part of the next step. It's an interesting thing. Earlier I said, you know, you can't fight your way out of a war, and I'm sure somebody in their mind's like, "Yes, you can. Like, you fight a war, you win, and then the war is over." But you have to stop fighting. Like if you kept on fighting, the war would keep on going, right? And then this is what we do is we layer, okay, procrastination, which is a form of resistance on top of resist, I'm gonna resist that, that's another war. And now I'm gonna like tell myself, you know, I should stop having a war with myself around procrastinating. I should stop resisting procrastinating. I'm now I've created a third level of fight. That's usually the bind we get into.

It feels like we can get addicted to, or just used to being in that fight.

That's right. There's a way to look at all of spiritual development. I wouldn't proselytize this, but there's an interesting mind experiment and body experiment to do. If you could look at all of development as just how much the fight can go away in a day-to-day, minute to minute, second to second thing. And there's an addiction to that fight. Like, when I do business with folks, you— like, one of the things that I read when I'm interacting with them is just like, oh, how much fight is in them. And if you see somebody with a lot of fight in them, they always have a couple people they're at battle with, you know. Like, achieving goals is a, is a battle. And you're like, okay, so If I'm doing business with this person, I have to be completely okay with the fact that they're gonna do battle with me, or they're gonna create a battle that I'm gonna get involved with. And so how much fight is in a person? And that's usually based on how much fight they had as a kid, right? How much being alive or being loved was a battle.

So it seems like this is like, there's a preference for being in, embodying some way of being in which we're not fighting ourselves and interacting and collaborating with people who are not fighting themselves. How do you hold that without partiality?

Yeah, beautiful, right? Because then immediately my mind comes to the Bhagavad Gita where it's like, our hero or main character says, I don't want to fight my brother. Krishna, I think it is. I'm gonna surely offend somebody. Comes down and says, now you gotta fight, right? And this is— this is— there's no life without tension. There's no life without resistance. You can't— you don't— you don't get to do that. You don't get to transform or grow. You want no resistance, you get death. The idea that you want less of it or more of it or is just another way to reify it and to be in the fight.

How do we not use this to justify being in a fight?

Yeah, how do you drop a hot frying pan? How do you, you know, how do you describe that to somebody? How do you just not swing the sword?

I mean, a different example than dropping the hot frying pan is maybe like, how do you let go of an AC current or DC current when you're being electrocuted, and it's actually making you grab harder.

Right. Yeah, that's probably— that is probably more accurate. I don't like it because it ruins my nice little answer to the question. See, the problem with the question is, how do we do it, is as soon as you think that there's a way to do it, then it becomes a should, and it becomes part of the battle.

Or a strategy.

The strategy, and then you're looking for a result and all of that stuff. And you're really looking to do the exact opposite of that. So if you like put in your body like this sense of like trying and struggle, and you feel that in your whole body, and then without thinking about it, you immediately feel the exact opposite of that feeling. That's all that's necessary is the exact opposite of that feeling. Even in your, say, your procrastination, it's that. There's a thousand ways to get there, except for there's no way to get there. There's a thousand ways to realize you're there, but there's no way to get there, is I think the more, the better pointer. And whether it's David Whyte's beautiful pointing of like, denial of denial, or whether it's the pointing of love your resistance, or if it's a pointing of just drop the frying pan, like they're all just pointers to just stop fighting.

If you have a relationship where there's some fight in it, rather than making the fight a problem and trying to fight the fight, just recognizing, okay, there's fight over here. Is this something that, you know, I can hold? Is this something that, that is okay? Or do I need to draw a boundary and go do something else, work with different people? And you could do that without having to change somebody.

Yeah, I would say that if you're in the question of that, you're in the resistance.

Oh, enlighten me.

There's moments when somebody acts a certain way and it's really clear to you, you're just like, oh no, no, that doesn't work for me. And if you wanna do that, like, you're welcome to, but just not, at me or near me, or I'm gonna go, whatever it is. You know, you're not changing them, but you just don't allow that in your world. And in that case, there's kind of no resistance, right? You're not in your lesson or your learning, you're not in your transformation. It's just like, I know this thing for now is this way for me. But if you're like, oh, should I do this or should I do that? Or maybe I could do this, maybe, you know, typically the one that people have is, Should I just draw the boundary or should I learn to accept it? Is it more enlightened for me to draw the boundary or more enlightened for me to accept it? And if you're in that question, you are in the transformation, therefore you're in the resistance. You're trying to solve it. You're trying to fix it. You're trying to make it different than what it is.

Well, what if it's not from a perspective of being the most enlightened you can be, but just like you're making a business decision and you're like, is it better for the business if I go option A or option B?

Same thing, it doesn't really matter what the end goal is. When I say more enlightened this or more enlightened that, I'm saying that it could be which would make me happier or which would be more profitable or which would be, but in all those places, it's where we're in our growth, we're in our transformation. And, you know, like think about the problem that you have in business 6 years ago and how it was like this big, oh my God, what am I gonna do? And now you face that same problem in different ways Once a month and it's, "No, what am I gonna do?" It's 'cause that, you know, that whatever that transformation has occurred. When you're meditating and, you know, early in meditation, you notice that you lost track of yourself in the meditation, you know, like there's a fight. I shouldn't, oh my God, why am I doing this? Why am I still sitting here? And then later it's just, there's no fight. There's just like, oh. Yep, here I am. Because you recognize that the moment that you see that you've lost yourself, you've found yourself. So you're not in that fight like that anymore. And so the, so that the resistance is that you're in your transformation. So there's a way to look at resistance and go, yay, I'm in my transformational process. Woo!

Right, for me, right? It's like bumping up against our edges.

Yeah.

And a sign that you're growing. But it really doesn't always feel that way. It often feels like a sign that you're not growing.

Yeah, yeah, that's exactly, it's that tension between the two things that is the, like, that I want it to be different. There's frustration. You know, even like little kids when they're learning to walk, they get really frustrated with themselves because when they fall down, not at the beginning of the transformational process, but in it, you know, they get really frustrated.

But what about the resistance to the wanting to be different itself? Like, 'cause wanting to be different also has its own wisdom. And that could be something to resist on its own.

Yeah, this is an interesting one. It kind of feels like oftentimes, not that it needs to be this way, but oftentimes when somebody's kind of beginning their journey, but before they get in the journey, they're like, yeah, self-help, spirituality, blah, blah, blah. And then they're like, they want something to be different. And then at some point, They're just like, "I don't want anything to be different. I just want to be me. I want to be as me as me can be. I want to see what I am," right? And there's like this acknowledgement that evolution happens. There's acknowledgement that development happens, but it's not particularly wanting to be different. It's not wanting to improve. Generally, that seems to be the progression that people go through. And my guess is it's very necessary. It's very necessary for someone to have the phase of wanting to be different. And then there's this phase that's very necessary for them to, that they see that that level of friction no longer serves them. That level of resistance no longer serves them. And so then they move into a different level. And so I think it's like almost anything that we do, whether it's recording sound or making movies or doing business, The more we do it, the more sensitive we become, the more refined we become in it, and the more that it's not done, the more it's done with discord, the more it becomes unpalatable for us. Right? So a great musician hears something that's a little out of tune and they're like, "Ugh." And like me, I'm like, "What? Out of tune?

Huh?

I like that. Got a good beat. You can dance to it." Whereas, I might sit with somebody and notice a little bit of tension in them that they wouldn't notice for 30 years, or 10 years, or 2 minutes, who knows, right? But as you do the work, you become more sensitive to the discord. And in that, the discord of I wanna be different, it stops becoming an accelerator and you start seeing it as a brake. But don't go rush, right? And I think this is what, David Whyte is saying is like, don't go rush and try to get to the place where you don't, where that want is gone. It's got its wisdom. It has its movement, you know, let it have its dance, enjoy its dance.

Yeah. A question that comes up for me now is like, what part wants to be different? Because like, in a lot of these episodes, we've arrived at this place where if you stop wanting to be different, if you let go of your, ideas of being different, you will naturally change. You will naturally grow. So there's a part of you that does want to be different. You could look at evolution and species want to be different. They just don't know.

Yeah.

There's just not a knowing somewhere of how that's going to go.

Right.

It seems like there's, if we are wanting to be different and we have an idea of what different would look like for us, then we're using our intellect, which is just going to be a limited, logic-y form of it.

But might be a great form of it too. Yeah, it doesn't really matter because it— a tree is going to grow the way a tree grows, right? We're going to grow the way that we grow. I, I don't know, correcting— is this because of my intellect says so, because of my mind says so? This is the soil, this is the sun, this is the This is the seed and we grow. And it doesn't mean we give up our ambition either, which is interesting, or our will. It's like the sensation is more that the ambition and the will belongs to something greater than us. The feeling is that it's more of a universal will or a universal ambition. And so in some aspects, far more gentle, and in some aspects, far more powerful.

What do you mean by universal will without jumping off the woo train?

You're going to try to stop me from jumping off the woo train?

No, I'm just going to show our listeners that I'm trying to keep you on the tracks.

It's a felt sense. It's an experiential— it's like trying to describe— there's a moment in which the sense of self changes in a kid, right? So there's a point where You ask them, do you want GI Joe with a kung fu grip for Christmas? And they're like, yep. And you're like, what does mom want? She wants GI Joe with a kung fu grip. Dad wants GI Joe with a kung fu grip. And then at some point they differentiate themselves and they see that their mom and dad might want something different than what they want for Christmas. And so that sense of self develops and it seems to get bigger. Like, it goes from like, I am me, to I am my family, even in the distinguishing nature of it, to I am my nation, I am people, I am the ecosystem. And as that sense of self changes, the parts of you belong to the bigger thing, right? And you can see this all the time where people like get lost in like, I am the nation, or I am my political party. And if they feel offended, it's not just them that are offended. It's like their nation that should be offended or is projected that way. So I think it's not anything different than that. It's just that the sense of self becomes bigger than you. It feels more universal or something like that. It feels more like oneness.

Yeah, that makes sense. And it also points to how this path can lead to better collaboration. Because you could start by, this is me, I am me, I have my problems and everybody else is in my way. To, hey, we all kind of have the same sort of problem. Everybody's got their own position that they're experiencing it from. And we can share and integrate all of our different sources of information and come up with something more complex as a result.

Yeah, there seems to be, there's like kind of levels of it that are better with collaboration and levels of it that are not as good with collaboration. And then there's like middle stages that are kind of strange. So, for instance, when you oftentimes at one stage of like seeing the world, you might like go into consensus and think that everybody's voice is equal. And then that obviously is like a great way to destroy an organization. There's manuals of the CIA written in the 1950s about how to How to Destroy an Organization and Consensus Building and Committees.

Wow, tell me more about that.

Oh, yeah, it's a great document. Basically, it's like a document that was written in, I think, '40s or '50s, CIA, how to go in and destroy a business in a country where you want to destroy that business. And it's like delegate all decision-making to committees, make sure the committees are all over 6 people, And if you go into the super dysfunctional organizations, that's what's happening all the time. I mean, and sometimes designed that way, like maybe Congress and the Senate are designed to be not entirely effective because you only want the really most critical laws to pass. But a lot of the nonprofit world is created this way where it's like offending somebody or making a call without everybody's agreement. Is very bad and are considered very bad, and then they become very ineffective in their, in their work. And so I would say eventually, yeah, collaboration just becomes nature, but it's the nature depending on where you find yourself in that process.

Yeah, I guess it's important that collaboration remains collaboration among individuals with different perspectives, right? Rather than an assumption that everybody is the same. And should end up with the same decision.

Right, or has the same authority or has the same expertise. It's like, it's that integration of— there's a great way to say it, which is that selfishness is the engine of unity, right? Like it's the selfish gene that makes the human, and it's the selfish human that makes the human race, and it's— And it's all these selfish, you know, cells and bacteria and fungus that are all making this beautiful Earth. So it's like the interdependence is created by our selfishness. And it's kind of— it puts you in that same perspective of without tension, there's no evolution. Without resistance, there's no transformation. Without selfishness, there's no unity.

So I think I can hear like half of our audience flipping out about this right now.

Good.

There must be ways for selfishness to lead to more connection and collaboration and selfishness to lead to more resistance and fight.

Yeah.

And I think that that could be a way to bring us back to resistance. A lot of the things that we've talked about in this work is that an impulse resisted turns into a kind of contorted impulse that leads to disconnection and a lot of the behaviors that people consider selfish in a bad way or in a harmful way.

Yeah, I mean, the key to being really good at selfishness is to really understand the underlying want, right? So the first one is like, I just wanna go get drunk and, you know, screw as many people as I can. That doesn't actually satisfy you. And so then what's the deeper want? And then what's the deeper want? And hopefully you don't have to play them all out. And eventually you find the deepest want, even close to the deepest want, ends up to be a deeply compassionate thing for the people around you as well, right? Like there's this idea that, that's like, I have to choose between being good to me or being good to you. And I don't find that experience. I find that when I'm truly being compassionate with myself, I'm almost always, that action is truly being compassionate for the people around me.

It seems like that also continues to relate to resistance because we might think we want something that we're used to wanting and just become really I don't know, we just get stuck in that groove and we want to start defending that want because we've already gotten so invested in it. And then when we start to see maybe we want something different, that could be the seed of denial.

Yeah, yeah. Or yeah, don't take that away from me. Or it becomes like the surrogate of something, you know, like there might be some political feature that we have that most of America doesn't want anymore. But the transformation of it is so scary. And the same thing in ourselves, like, "Oh yeah, I don't wanna be watching television 3 hours every night anymore." But then I sit with myself for the first 10 minutes, I'm like, "I don't wanna feel that." So boom, back to the television. So it's almost like it's not selfishness that's the problem. It's almost just like, Undeveloped selfishness is the problem that we're competing against. And it's really strange that every time I hear somebody call themselves selfish in a session, I'll say something to the effect, maybe not every time, but something to the effect of like, okay, so when your parents called you selfish, what did they really mean? And almost to a T, what they all really meant was, I want you to do something different. Means. I've never called my kids selfish. Like, you know, it's just, it's usually just a parent saying like, I wanted you to do this and you did this other thing, you're selfish. I'm not even sure if I believe in the word selfishness in that way. But, but what I really like is that what you're saying is that there's moments of resistance that will move us away from, will create an evolution in us where our we can see more clearly what's gonna make us happy. We can see more clearly what brings us peace. We can see more clearly what creates harmony amongst the people that we love. And there's something very true about that. Like, one of the principles that I live by is embrace intensity. And that's exactly for that reason, which is that intensity, that resistance, is like, I have found the more I embrace it, The more I run towards it, the more I run into it and through it, the more I love it for what it is, the less I resist it, the more at peace my life becomes, the more loving I become, the more generous I become. So for those people who don't like what I'm saying, great, beautiful. There's some resistance to run towards. I'm not saying agree with me, but yeah, feel it.

That kind of brings back to, like, one of the kinds of resistances is when we start to recognize something is true that we didn't want to be true. Or maybe we recognize a deeper want that isn't convenient for us or doesn't seem convenient for, you know, people that we're in agreements with or something.

Yeah.

So there's some of this advice is like, or like a tool is to embrace intensity. What else can we do to recognize those moments, give ourselves the compassion to feel that resistance, not problematize it, and then embrace that intensity.

In a weird way, that's like all the work that all spirituality and all psychology and all psychotherapy and all— it's kind of answering that question. That's all it really is, is, right, there is our natural movement towards ourselves, our own evolution, and there is the resistance, and the question is, how does that resistance get met? What's the most effective or efficient or joyful way to meet the resistance? And I would, my kind of rule of thumb is like, go for the joy. Like, I don't want the, Resistance to change, how can I meet it most joyfully? And if you think it's like fake a smile, you'll notice that's not very joyful. But it's more to ask that question. And there's also the question of who's resisting, which is, or what is resisting? That's a great question as well. How do I love the resistance? That's a question. How do I find the wisdom in the resistance? All of those things I think are hacks. The one that's most commonly not seen is what's the feeling I'm resisting? What's the thing I don't wanna feel? And go and feel it.

Yeah, which I guess in the case of like procrastination or some forms of resistance is the resistance itself, which brings me back to what you said earlier in this episode about just going all the way into it, which seems counterintuitive at first, but it makes more sense in this context. 'Cause you can just enjoy going into the resistance and be like, Okay, this is what it's like to feel this resistance. Great.

Yeah, with procrastination especially, it's a really unique, that's the thing. Each form of resistance has its own little nooks and crannies. Like for instance, procrastination, one of the things that, the reason it works, why it becomes like an AC current instead of a hot frying pan, so to speak, every time you think about doing the project, you're giving yourself a negative reinforcement. So why the fuck would you wanna do it, right? Okay, I'm thinking about the project. Now I'm beating myself up for not doing it. So the project is associated with beating yourself up. Think about it on a mammalian level. A dog comes and every time it sees you, you kick it in the face. It doesn't wanna see you anymore. It doesn't wanna be around you. It doesn't wanna approach you. Every time you approach a problem, you kick yourself in the face. Procrastination can be really easily solved if every time you think about the problem, you then envision yourself enjoying the shit outta doing it. Instead of, why haven't I done that yet? Positively reward yourself every time you move towards that thing instead of negatively rewarding yourself. And I think this is generally the way in which the AC current happens instead of the hot frying pan, right? It's like that reinforcement that occurs generally is that our resistance is painful and unwanted. And we associate it with the thing. So worked with a woman once who lost her dad when she was a child, and every time she thought about her dad, it hurts. So she just doesn't think about her dad anymore, right? Which is a world of denial and a world of pain, a world of unfelt emotions, like a severe rigidity. All that stuff is happening, and it's all because she unconsciously negatively reinforced herself caused herself pain every time she thought of her dad.

Yeah, and not, you know, caused herself suffering, not like just letting herself feel the pain of losing her dad.

Yes, yeah, so if we're making the distinction the way the Buddhists do, yes, which is like suffering is the resistance to the pain.

Yeah, something that's been helping me lately with like things that I'm putting off or procrastinating is just sitting with what it feels like to be avoiding doing it, which invariably feels less good than actually doing it. Even though the perception is like, oh, but doing it, I'm going to feel confused. I'm not going to know what to do. I don't have the answers. Wah, wah, wah. But like actually doing it, like writing something, like writing an email can be, even if you don't know what you want to say when you sit down and do it, starting to type feels better than staring at it and kicking yourself in the face.

Yeah. You even in the wow, wow, wow was kind of kicking yourself in the face like that.

Yeah.

Which is what's causing my smile right now. I love not knowing what to do. Yeah. And getting it wrong.

Yeah, that's a funny double bind. Like, I really actually get bored immediately once I know what to do.

Yeah, exactly. If I have an email all laid out in my head, I'm far more likely, it's far more likely to take me a little time to get to it. If I'm like, oh man, I have no idea what to say here, then it's more likely for me to actually do it, which just lets you know how arbitrary the whole thing is, right? It's just the whole thing is this arbitrary notion of what we define as what feels good and what feels bad. And we define that because of our past history, because of an idea we hold about it. And as that stuff starts evaporating, as that, as we see through our ideas, like as you are experiencing this podcast, hopefully this podcast has just destroyed a couple of ideas that you had. That's the idea, is like it just pummels them. And then you're like, wait a second, I don't know how to feel. I don't know what to think here. And you're kind of left in that place. And as that occurs, all of a sudden we can create the relationship we want with it, not the one that we were taught.

Yeah, one of the ideas that I had was like, oh, I've had so many stories that I've wanted to write about my adventures and experiences. I've spent so much time thinking about what I would write, and then at some point I just never did, and then the moment passed. And I'm like realizing now, kind of triggered by something you said earlier, that in a number of those cases, I was figuring the whole thing out in my head, and then eventually I knew exactly what the story was. Right. And then it became uninteresting and I just receded in the background. I never actually wrote it.

Right.

Because I wasn't actually writing when I was doing the figuring out, so nothing ended up written down.

Exactly. And it's just, to tie it back to resistance, this is like the whole, like, oh, I have this idea of how it is. Even that can be a form of resistance.

Yeah.

You know, like, just like you said, at some point, becoming better, the idea of becoming better, the idea, not the actuality, but the idea of becoming better becomes too, has too much friction. Same way this can have too much friction as well. It starts becoming unpalatable.

Well, I definitely feel right now like a lot of the ideas and perceptions that I had about myself are somewhat broken right now after this conversation.

Somebody was frustrated with me the other day. They're like, "Okay, well, you did all that. Now what am I supposed to believe?" And I'm like, "Nothing. Stop. Stop trying to construct a reality around yourself." It's there.

Yeah, yeah, I'm definitely sitting in a lot of questions now, which I'm looking forward to getting into. Tell me about a time that you struggled with some resistance for a period of time and then suddenly found a way not to do it or just simply stopped doing it.

Yeah, in my 20s, I smoked a lot of pot. I don't know if it was a lot compared to what I see nowadays, but I definitely had a pot habit. And mostly it was like on the weekends. And then there was a short time where it was like daily when I didn't have this job. And I, man, I just like, I beat myself up over it so bad. I mean, I remember just like the critical voice in my head got so loud and I became so abusive. I see that now a lot with pot smokers generally is that like, Depression is overprolonged use, seems to be part of it. It's like they're not motivated to do stuff. They're constantly seeing the faults in themselves and the world. And I was just like fully in it. And no matter how hard I fought to get out, it just drove me deeper into it because the more that I was abusing myself about it, the more I wanted to escape myself, the more I smoked the pot. Right? Like, so it was just kind of like, that was the cycle that I was in. And at some point along the line, I just realized, oh, what is it that I really don't want to face? What is the self that I really don't want to face? This is really early on in my spiritual journey. I think just after like my first meditation retreat or a couple years. I have a bad sense of time. And I just ran into that. I just ran into that feeling. It turned out to be sadness was really the thing that I didn't want to feel. It was just some emotions, some anger, some sadness. And then I ran towards it. And then pot just became like, I don't want to fucking abuse myself like that. And then it was like, oh, but I like it once a week and I cleaned my house. And then, but anyways, by the time I was like 28, something like that, it was like the habit had almost completely disappeared. And then it completely disappeared. And I just, I look back, I'm like, wait, I didn't try at all to end this thing. I didn't at all try to stop it. And now it holds absolutely no appeal. Like I look at it and I'm just like, yeah, no, there's just, you know, someone offers it to me at a party or something. And I'd say there's just zero appeal. There's no temptation. There's no willpower. There's just, a lack of interest. And so the more I resisted the habit of pot, the addiction of pot, the more it grew, the more shame grew with it. And as soon as I looked at the underlying thing and embraced the intensity, then the whole thing just kind of disappeared, just dissolved without will, without trying. It just kind of undid itself. And I find that generally that's the case, is a place where I'm in the fight, there's something under— some resistance, or not resistance, some, um, there's some intensity underneath that's been wanting to be embraced. And what's really interesting about that is that I used to think that there was some rush in that. I used to think that, um, oh my God, I gotta— yeah, I gotta embrace all the intensity. I gotta I have to fix all the issues. I have to stop all the resistance. And then I realized like—

There's only so much time.

Yeah, there's only so much time. And I realized it doesn't really matter if you do, it'll stay there, it'll wait for you. Like if you don't solve your pot addiction today, it'll be there tomorrow. You know, there's no rush. Whatever it is that you want to transform about yourself, It's gonna stay there. The problem doesn't go away until it's addressed. So you can be patient. And that in itself was just another way to let go of another level of resistance, another fight in me. And the way I think about it now is like, I can't let go of resistance. It's letting go of life. You know, I can't let go of that tension. So the question is, how do I hold it with the most gentleness and love? How do I hold without ever letting go of it, without ever losing contact, without ever losing the intimacy with resistance? How do I hold it as lightly, as gently, as lovingly as possible?

Yeah, I really like that. And that sounds like an episode.

We'll see.

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