People ask me every day
why other people in their life won't change,
and why, no matter what they do,
they can't change certain things.
The answer is actually very simple;
It's that there is some resistance to the change.
What that means is that some energies
involved in the situation, are a "Yes" to the situation or the change,
and some are a "No".
This is really hard to recognize when you're not conscious
of the resistance.
For example:
You might be a person who tells yourself:
"You know what? What I want more than anything in the world
is a committed partner."
Because this is your conscious awareness,
you're totally unaware of unconscious aspects of yourself
that, for example,
would see a committed partner as a way of losing autonomy.
Loosing your sense of self.
Therefore, while most of your conscious energy
is going towards getting a partner,
all of those subconscious energies
are looking to sabotage that, every step you take.
Because their intention is to keep you single.
Why People Don't Change
It is our failure to recognize and work with
whatever resistance might be present
that keeps us stuck in patterns
the way that that pattern is.
To understand resistance,
I'm gonna give you a metaphor;
I want you to imagine a stream with a fast moving current.
In this current there's a boat.
This boat has six ores men in it.
Each of whom have a paddle.
Some of these ores men are paddling downstream with the current,
some of them are paddling upstream against the current.
These ores men who are trying to paddle the boat upstream,
are in resistance.
They're in resistance to the current itself,
they are also in resistance to the ores men
who are also trying to paddle the boat downstream.
Resistance is nothing more than oposition.
It is any opositional force.
We can meet with opposition from the outside,
and we can meet with opposition from the inside.
Now, external opposition is easy to figure out.
It's people, circumstances, events
and things that are opposing us in some way.
But external resistance mirrors our internal resistance.
The main source of internal opposition,
the source of our resistant thoughts, words and actions,
is the splits within our own consciousness.
So, the rule of thumb in life is this:
If there is any resistance that exists within your body,
you have to stop what you're doing
and deal with or resolve that resistance first,
before doing anything else.
For more information about resistance,
and also what to do about it, watch my video titled:
URGENT! Deal with Your Resistance Before You Do Anything Else
There are multiple reasons why people resist change.
So that you can understand the most fundamental elements
of why people resist change,
I've made a list for you;
#1.
Our sense of safety and security and stability
is completely wound in
to the way things are,
to what's familiar,
to what we already know.
And so, any type of change
destabilizes our sense of security and safety
and also, our sense of control.
For example;
Let's say that the strategy that we found
in order to stay safe,
is to be independent.
But then something happens to us, a change happens in our life
that forces us into a kind of dependency.
When we depend on other people
we will automatically, with that change,
feel completely unsafe.
So we're gonna resist that change happening.
Or, let's say,
that we find our sense of safety
in our belonging with other people.
And we are looking at a change,
feeling like if we make that change, suddenly we're gonna be different.
Now, if we're different,
that means we're probably invalidating other people around us,
and so we may be ostracized.
That makes us feel unsafe.
And so, we resist the change.
The need for routine, which is pretty much the opposite of change,
falls into this category.
Our routine is familiar and makes us feel secure.
When we have to do something different,
and our routine gets disturbed,
we lose that sense of security.
Perceiving ourselves to be unsafe or vulnerable
activates our primal centers for survival,
which tell us this change must be avoided at all costs.
#2.
Change tends to make us lose our confidence.
We've already become accustomed to the way things are.
We've developed skills around the way things are,
so this goes hand in hand with a sense of security
and a sense of control.
We get a lot of empowerment
out of how much control we have over the situation at hand.
So whenever something changes,
suddenly we start to feel insecure,
we start to feel incompetent,
we start to feel like those skills we've already built up
are now thrown out the window and are obsolete.
And this is another element of unsafety that goes hand in hand with competense.
We tend to feel, when any change is upon us,
that any other person that might actually be more capable,
or more used to that situation,
all of a sudden has more power than we do.
So suddenly we feel less than them.
And that can also feel quite dangerous.
All in all, what this sums up to
is the fact that a change tends to make us feel
a decrease in self-esteem and confidence.
And that's something that most people want to avoid at all costs.
#3. We do understand
or we misunderstand the need for the change.
This is especially true,
if you weren't included in the decision to make that change.
If we weren't consulted on it,
or if we perceive that that change is not actually in our best interest.
If we do not get why a change is happening
or why it's needed,
we will fight hard for what we already do.
Also, certain changes,
especially when we're not consulted on it,
and therefore didn't feel like we really chose it,
and we don't really understand the need for it,
Some of those changes are actually perceived by us
as a bad change.
Now, when we perceive that a change is bad,
instead of a good change,
we're gonna resist that unlike any other change that's put before us.
It may be interesting to know that the very most drastic changes
that happen in most people's lives,
happen as a result of crisis.
The reason for this is because
people tend to be so resistant to change
that it requires a crisis for them to actually change things.
In other words, people won't chose change,
instead, the forces that be in the universe
often end up forcing it upon them.
When this happens, the first thing that we do
is refuse to accept that a change has been forced on us.
In fact, it is change we're trying to prevent.
All the ways that we try to gain control over the situation
of the change that is occurring
is an attempt to get things to revert back to "normal"
to not change, right?
In fact, it takes us a very long time
to accept the fact that it's not going back to normal,
that the change is happening regardless of whether we're on board or not.
#4.
Fear of what we project into the unknown
and insecurity about the new.
Now, many of you who have been watching my videos,
know that there's no such thing as fear of the unknown.
What it is is that you're projecting something you fear into the unknown.
Now, when we're in a situation where we're about to encounter something new
that's what change is all about,
our worrying mind kicks into high gear and starts to project
every single potencial issue that could be happening.
And when that process happens,
it starts to discourage us from making the change.
Also, as you've learned in the last point,
Confidence is rooted in what we do know.
This is why there are sayings like:
"Better known pain, than unknown pleasure."
or...
"Better the devil you know, than the devil you don't."
What it means is that we tend to choose to stay in a situation
and not make a change,
even if we know that not changing is painful.
Most of us would rather do this,
than take a risk that by making the change,
things could be better.
The reason for this,
is that we feel confidence in our ability
to handle the pain we already are experiencing,
the pain we already know.
This is why most people make a change
only when they're in literally so much pain where they are,
that it doesn't matter
whether they're jumping off a cliff and taking that risk, you see?
~ Laughter ~
So, what we tend to do is to chose something
that we know we can handle.
Where when we're looking at a change
that might push us into something that could be better,
it could also be worse,
and we don't actually have confidence in our capacity to handle it,
if it gets worse.
You can see this in effect,
the minute that somebody gets unsafe,
because what they chose to do is to go back to a situation they know.
They go back to what's familiar.
Even if the situation itself is more dangerous than the alternative.
#5.
We have an emotional connection to something that that change
is threatening us that we might lose.
If we perceive that we're gonna encounter any kind of loss
in conjunction with the change,
we're gonna dig our heels in
and refuse to change.
This could be a loss of a person, a place or thing,
it could also be a loss of an idea, a feeling or experience.
For example,
if a person gets so old that they're no longer allowed to drive,
they may resist the change,
because it causes them to feel a loss of a sense of autonomy
that they cherish.
#6.
Low levels of trust.
Now, obviously,
this is gonna be in high gear
any time a change is initiated by someone other than ourselves.
Now, that doesn't mean that distrust is just about other people,
in fact, it has to do with yourself aswel,
but we live in a world where, to be completely honest with you,
people haven't learned yet, to take other people as a part of themselves.
and therefore, they haven't learned to take other people's best interest
as a part of their best interests.
And this is the foundation of trust.
To the degree that a person has grown up to expect this experience,
of other people not taking their best interests as part of themselves,
they will distrust and resist
any change that is being suggested by somebody else.
Or any change that's initiated by someone else.
Also, growing up in a world where you can't really trust other people
because they're not really capitalizing on your best interest,
creates splits or fragments in our own consciousness.
Now, what's really interesting is that these splits in our own consciousness
begin to mirror that external behavior
of not taking each other's best interests into account.
So what's actually happening in a lot of people's internal systems
is zero sum games being played between parts.
One part is acting despite another part's best interest.
And that does not create an atmosphere internally of self trust.
In fact, it creates one of self distrust.
And so what you'll watch in this person's life
is that any time a change is gonna be made,
one part of their own consciousness is like:
"Yeah!!! It doesn't matter what the other parts think."
And the other part is like:
"No, no no, you're gonna destroy my life, No!"
So that presents internal resistance.
In other words, any time you're trying to make a change,
there are other parts within you that are not on board
with taking that change.
They don't trust that that's gonna be in their best interest at all.
#7.
We don't clearly see the reward or benefit of the change.
Because if we did,
we would have made the change already.
If we don't see the reward or benefit of a change,
we don't feel like we chose the change,
we feel like it's forced on us.
And this makes us feel totally out of control.
This also makes recognizing the benefit or reward of the change
almost impossible to see.
Instead, it feels like the change itself is against us.
No one is gonna get on board
with any change that they feel is gonna leave them worse off.
And in that same vein,
which is the most important thing to realize about this particular point is,
if we look at making a change,
and the rewards or benefits don't justify the effort,
or the discomfort involved in making that change,
we're not gonna make the change.
#8.
Even the most "unconscious" people walking the planet today
feel the reality,
if not at a conscious level, at a subconscious level,
of ripple effects.
We live in a universe where one of the most dominant laws that governs
is cause and effect.
So, that means we're living in a world
of dominos.
In a highly interdependent reality,
one change can lead to many many other changes.
It can bring about a whole new set of problems along with possibilities.
Most of us intuitively sense that our lives are a game of dominos.
we have some of these dominos that we're okay with falling,
and others that we're not okay with having fall.
So I want you to imagine that when you make a change
you're just watching that set of dominos
~ Falling Sounds ~
topple.
But some of them you're like: "NO! NO! No, no, no, no!"
Feels pretty disempowering, doesn't it?
For example, a woman might avoid leaving her husband
because she knows that doing so will force her to have to get a job.
Doing that would mean that she would have to put her kids in daycare.
And doing that, she imagines,
will make them feel negatively towards her.
Now, that's one of those dominos she's not okay with.
We're especially afraid of making a change
if we can feel the potential of a change to affect many areas of our life,
but don't have a clear vision of exactly how or in what ways.
For more information about this, you can watch my video titled:
The Catch Up Effect (Why We Really Fear Change)
One critical thing to understand about resistance
is that it doesn't come from a bad place.
A lot of times,
specially when we consciously think we want a certain change,
we feel as if the parts of ourselves that are pulling against it,
or other people from the outside
are really just sabotaging the crap out of us.
But I want you to get that resistance actually comes from a "good" place.
Other people, as well as parts of yourself, resist change
when they think that that change is gonna lead them to pain,
instead of pleasure.
Or lead you to pain, instead of pleasure.
Their perception may be wrong,
but they actually think it's in your best interest to say:
"No" instead of "Yes" to something.
For eaxample,
a person who is anti abortion
and doesn't want any change to happen within policies to make abortion legal,
is genuinely convinced
that what they are voting against
is murder.
So they feel like they're preserving life.
Now, if you walked up to anybody and you said:
"Do you believe in preserving life?"
Most people would be like: "Hell Yeah! That's what's good."
"Do you believe in supporting murder?"
Most people would be like: "Hell no!"
That's where these people are,
so they believe that anybody who's a "Yes" to these abortion laws changing,
is voting for murder.
So, you could understand why
that resistance is innate in them.
A part of you that does not wanna lose weight,
may believe that if it loses weight,
it's no longer gonna be able to buffer you from the world,
and stay safe by staying hidden and invisible.
To this part, any part of you that wants to lose weight
is literally trying to blindley walk you
into an interpersonal battlefield without any armour.
To understand this in depth, watch my video titled:
There Is No Such Thing as Self Sabotage
If we feel that a change will bring about something that's positive,
needed and wanted,
and will not cause us to lose anything that we can't afford to lose,
we feel that that change is safe.
We will then willingly accept any discomfort that comes with change.
There will either be no resistance to the change,
or the resistance will be so minimal that the change will not be a hard "no".
There is a big difference vibrationally
between I'm scared and it's a "no" for me,
and it's a "yes" for me, but I'm scared.
This means that if a change isn't happening,
you must work with the resistance,
instead of against the resistance.
Working against resistance
is nothing more than resisting resistance
and we all know where that goes.
You have to do it with an open mind
that is not fixated on the idea that the change has to happen
no matter what.
Because that's not a state of openness.
Any time a change isn't happening,
you've got to work to resolve that resistance.
And you've gotta do that with understanding and compassion.
And hopefully, knowing these basic reasons why
people resist change, including you,
that will be esier to do.
Have a good week.
If you liked this video,
Be sure to share it, like it, and also subscribe to my channel
so you can see more content like this.
But I want to personally thank you
for taking the initiative
and having the bravery to step into the space of awareness
not only for yourself, but for the benefit of those around you.
Subtitles by: Tanya Duarte www.tanyaduarte.com