To have your dreams come true and to create a life that works, you need to take action. The challenge is to discover what action you need to take. 

When you are in a state of fear and upset, you destroy your ability to see what needs to be done. You close down and get tunnel vision. All you can do is to fight, resist, hang on, blame, or withdraw. Almost any action you take in this state makes your situation worse.

Upsets seem to be caused by what happens, but this is an illusion. Upsets are not caused by what happens. Upsets are caused by fighting and resisting what happens.

To see this in your life, select a recent upset. Now notice what would happen to the upset if, somehow, you were totally at peace with what happened. There would be no upset. There would be no upset, because the upset wasn't caused by what happened. The upset was caused by fighting and resisting what happened.

The moment you take away the fighting and resisting, the upset disappears. You restore both your peace of mind and your effectiveness.

Now notice what would happen if someone spilled a glass of water on you. You would be wet and you would be wet no matter how you felt about it. Your feelings would be totally irrelevant. You would still be wet.

If you were at peace with being wet, there would be no upset. If you fought being wet, you would be upset. And the more you fought being wet, the more upset you would be. The upset may seem to be caused by the water, but it's not. It's the result of fighting being wet.

The same is true with every upset. Nothing has the ability to create an upset inside you. Only you can do that.

So why do we fight and resist what happens? We fight what happens, because our circumstances trigger a suppressed hurt from the past. To say this another way, our circumstances strike a nerve.

This is why different people get upset at different things. Different people have different nerves that get triggered. This is also why the same type of upsets and the same self-sabotaging behavior keep showing up in your life. The same suppressed hurt keeps getting triggered.

It's the automatic, subconscious avoidance of this hurt that sabotages our lives. Finding and healing this hurt is one of the most important things you can ever do.

Resisting Makes Your
Situation Worse By: Bill Ferguson

At any moment, your life is exactly the way that it is.

The people in your life are the way that they are and you are the way that you are. Everything may change tomorrow, but at any moment, what's so is what's so.

When you are at peace with the truth of "what's so", you can see what needs to be done. You become very effective in handling your situation.

When you fight the truth, you become full of fear and upset. You then create a state of tunnel vision that destroys your ability to see what needs to be done. You quickly make your situation worse.

Here is an example:

Marci was unreliable and her husband Michael hated it. He needed to rely on her because they worked together. When she didn't do her part, he got upset.

He did everything he could to change her, but nothing worked. Marci continued to be unreliable, and the more he resisted her unreliablity, the more unrelable she became.

Finally, after years of relying on her and suffering the consequences, Michael had a realization that changed his life. He realized that Marci wasn't reliable. He hated it, but he finally saw that this was true.

This would have been obvious to anyone else, but Michael couldn't see it. He couldn't see the truth because he didn't want this to be the truth. He wanted Marci to be reliable.

Once he stopped resisting and let in the truth, he saw his situation clearly. He didn't like what he saw, but he could see what he needed to do. For starters, he needed to stop relying on Marci.

The moment he stopped resisting, this area of his life cleared up.

Resisting destroys your ability to see what needs to be done. It also magnifies whatever you are resisting. In fact, the very act of resisting gives power to whatever you are resisting. It gets stronger and more solid.

Here are some examples that demonstrate this:

Imagine four yellow balloons on the ceiling above you. Now, whatever you do, don't think of them. You just thought about them. Don't do that.

Notice what happens when you resist the yellow balloons. You keep thinking about them. In fact, you can hardly think of anything else. Resisting the thought of yellow balloons gives the thought power and keeps it alive.

The same thing happens with anything you resist. By resisting, you create more of whatever you are resisting.

Let's say that you are married and that you have a fear of losing your spouse. The more you resist losing your spouse, the more you hang on, and the more you push your spouse away.

Here's another example. Look at how you feel when someone tries to change you. How do you feel about changing? You don't want to. You get upset and become resistant. You don't want to change a thing.

The same thing happens when you resist someone else or any other aspect of your life. The very act of resisting makes whatever you resist more solid.

Look at any area of your life that isn't working.

This area of your life is the way that it is, and you are fighting it. By your fighting and resisting this area of your life, you destroy your ability to see what needs to be done. You literally make your situation worse.

So why do we resist? Why can't we flow with life? Why can't we be at peace with the truth?

We resist to avoid the same nerve that creates our upsets. Ultimately, this nerve is an old, childhood hurt of feeling worthless, not good enough, not worth loving, a failure or some other form of feeling "not okay."

Finding and healing this hurt is one of the most important things you can ever do.

To learn how, make sure you read the sections, Find And Heal The Inner Issues That Run Your Life and Be Willing To Feel Your Hurt.