Last Friday I gave myself something I do not do nearly often enough: a day retreat of sorts. A day to step back, get quiet, and reflect.
I want to share one thing my facilitator that day, Patrick Harbula, offered. Partly because I think it might help you, and partly because writing it down helps me actually practice it, the same way working with a coach makes a private intention into a real one.
What does it mean that whatever we resist persists?
It means avoidance feeds the thing you are avoiding. The line I heard was that whatever we resist not only persists but magnifies, and whatever we embrace becomes our ally, our teacher, and our healer. Running from a feeling or a task tends to enlarge it. Turning toward it tends to shrink it.
Whatever we resist not only persists, but magnifies. And whatever we embrace becomes our ally, our teacher, and our healer.
It is such a beautiful, concise bit of wisdom. And the moment I heard it, it felt so obviously true.
And yet I have spent so much of my life with what I can only describe as the mind of an amoeba. Poke an amoeba with something noxious and it simply recoils, contracts, moves away.
For years that was me with anything painful or uncomfortable: a reflex to flinch and run, away from the very thing in front of me.
How does mindfulness help with something I am avoiding?
It buys you a pause. What mindfulness and contemplation actually offer is not heroic toughness. It is the smallest and most important gap between the first wave of reactivity and what you do next. From inside that pause, the thing you were avoiding starts to look different.
I want to be careful here, because this is not a no pain, no gain pep talk. That spartan, grit-your-teeth philosophy is, if anything, the opposite of how we think.
We genuinely need rest. We need refuge and space from our busy, stressful lives. That matters, and it is not what I am talking about.
What I am talking about is a quiet shift in direction. When the hard thing is the thing that actually needs doing, seeing it as an ally rather than an enemy changes how it feels.
There is suddenly more lightness in it, and more compassion for ourselves in the doing. It becomes purposeful instead of punishing.
What if I do not know which way to turn?
That is precisely where this is most useful. When you genuinely do not know the way forward, inner wisdom does its quiet work by letting you look at the thing you have been turning against and see it in a softer, truer light. The answer is often inside the thing you are avoiding.
Because here is the part life keeps teaching me. So often the universe gives us no real choice. We can resist, avoid and run, and the thing just persists, and frequently grows larger for our running. Or we can turn toward it.
I am not saying I have mastered any of this. But even just internalizing it a little has given me a small, real sense of freedom.
And if you follow it all the way down, even our resistance itself becomes something to turn toward rather than away from. There is a surprising amount of peace waiting there.
So my small invitation: notice one thing you have been quietly resisting, a feeling, a task, a hard conversation, a truth, and instead of recoiling, turn toward it just slightly. Treat it, for a moment, as a possible teacher.
