What You Resist Will Persist Quotes

Whatever you fight, you strengthen, and what you resist, persists.

What you resist, persists

What you resist, persists

Forgiveness is healing—everything is energy—thoughts create—we are all connected—what you resist persists—true love never dies—the soul’s immortality is the only true immortality—

whatever you fight, you strengthyen. What you resist, persists. "A New Earth":War is a mind set

...what you resist not only persists, but will grow in size.

Just do not give up at the first signs of resistance because you can break through many barriers with persistence.

The bigger the change you’re suggesting, the more it will sap people’s self-control. And when people exhaust their self-control, what they’re exhausting are the mental muscles needed to think creatively, to focus, to inhibit their impulses, and to persist in the face of frustration or failure. In other words, they’re exhausting precisely the mental muscles needed to make a big change. So when you hear people say that change is hard because people are lazy or resistant, that’s just flat wrong. In fact, the opposite is true: Change is hard because people wear themselves out. And that’s the second surprise about change: What looks like laziness is often exhaustion.

What you resist persists.

As you develop the unconditional love, what you’re essentially looking for is where your body or mind resists this love. One of the most persistent and difficult “resisters” is toxic shame. We finally stop running.

What you resist, persists. What you look at disappears. That is, it ceases to have its illusory form. You see it for what it Is. And what Is can always be changed. It is only what Is Not that cannot be changed. Therefore, to change the Isness, move into it. Do not resist it. Do not deny it.

What you resist, persists....Let go and your life will flow.

What I Will by Suheir Hammad I will not dance to your war drum. I will not lend my soul nor my bones to your war drum. I will not dance to your beating. I know that beat. It is lifeless. I know intimately that skin you are hitting. It was alive once hunted stolen stretched. I will not dance to your drummed up war. I will not pop spin break for you. I will not hate for you or even hate you. I will not kill for you. Especially I will not die for you. I will not mourn the dead with murder nor suicide. I will not side with you nor dance to bombs because everyone else is dancing. Everyone can be wrong. Life is a right not collateral or casual. I will not forget where I come from. I will craft my own drum. Gather my beloved near and our chanting will be dancing. Our humming will be drumming. I will not be played. I will not lend my name nor my rhythm to your beat. I will dance and resist and dance and persist and dance. This heartbeat is louder than death. Your war drum ain’t louder than this breath.

The desire to make art begins early. Among the very young this is encouraged (or at least indulged as harmless) but the push toward a 'serious' education soon exacts a heavy toll on dreams and fantasies....Yet for some the desire persists, and sooner or later must be addressed. And with good reason: your desire to make art -- beautiful or meaningful or emotive art -- is integral to your sense of who you are. Life and Art, once entwined, can quickly become inseparable; at age ninety Frank Lloyd Wright was still designing, Imogen Cunningham still photographing, Stravinsky still composing, Picasso still painting. But if making art gives substance to your sense of self, the corresponding fear is that you're not up to the task -- that you can't do it, or can't do it well, or can't do it again; or that you're not a real artist, or not a good artist, or have no talent, or have nothing to say. The line between the artist and his/her work is a fine one at best, and for the artist it feels (quite naturally) like there is no such line. Making art can feel dangerous and revealing. Making art is dangerous and revealing. Making art precipitates self-doubt, stirring deep waters that lay between what you know you should be, and what you fear you might be. For many people, that alone is enough to prevent their ever getting started at all -- and for those who do, trouble isn't long in coming. Doubts, in fact, soon rise in swarms: "I am not an artist -- I am a phony. I have nothing worth saying. I'm not sure what I'm doing. Other people are better than I am. I'm only a [student/physicist/mother/whatever]. I've never had a real exhibit. No one understands my work. No one likes my work. I'm no good. Yet viewed objectively, these fears obviously have less to do with art than they do with the artist. And even less to do with the individual artworks. After all, in making art you bring your highest skills to bear upon the materials and ideas you most care about. Art is a high calling -- fears are coincidental. Coincidental, sneaky and disruptive, we might add, disguising themselves variously as laziness, resistance to deadlines, irritation with materials or surroundings, distraction over the achievements of others -- indeed anything that keeps you from giving your work your best shot. What separates artists from ex-artists is that those who challenge their fears, continue; those who don't, quit. Each step in the artmaking process puts that issue to the test.

This world can erode girls, strip away their foundation of self Love. The act is gradual, can be inviting. One day, you naturally feed yourself what feels good to your soul. Another day, you find yourself as a woman so far out to sea you cannot see your soul. To be well as a woman is to choose continuous resistance to this subtle erosion. Persistent whole-keeping. Many want to break you down, fraction you up. Turn you into parts. Stay whole. Surround yourself with wholeness and whole-keepers. Make your freedom sing. You are everything.

There are those who say that to know God you must overcome all earthly passions. Yet to understand and accept them is enough. What you resist persists. What you look at disappears.

What you resist, persists. Until you deal with your feelings, you will be stuck with them.

Finally, don’t try to “get out” of anything. What you resist, persists. I

Whatever you fight, you strengthen, and what you resist, persists.”   Lesson

I was no more interested in agriculture than I was in learning how to milk cats, but I persisted because I couldn’t resist bothering him while he was reading. “And what have you learned so far?” “That certain young women are relentless pests,” he responded blandly, his eyes still fixed on the book. “Ridiculous,” I chided. “That has nothing to do with agriculture.

This most often takes the form of an argumentative, fighting kind of relationship in which you persistently struggle to control and change your worrisome thoughts, only to find that the more you resist and oppose them, the more persistent they become.

What we resist persists. Whether it’s pain, anxiety, fear, loss—whatever emotion you feel—don’t fight it. Experience it. Feel it all. Lean into it. Surrender to it. Breathe into it fully. Open your arms wide and welcome it all. Let go. It will lead you to the light.

If you then run into resistance that persistence seems unable to penetrate, it is best if she rejects you so that you know for sure that it is time to move on. The less time you have known a woman, the easier it will be for her to do so, but if she is being unclear for an extended period of time, you might have to explicitly tell her that you want to have sex with her. That usually works, either way.

. . .biographers tend to regard as character those elements of personality that remain constant, or nearly so, throughout. . .Like practitioners of fractal geometry, biographers seek patterns that persist as one moves from micro- to macro-levels of analysis, and back again. . . . It follows from this that the scale across which we seek similarity need not be chronological. Consider the following incidents in the life of Stalin between 1929 and 1940, arranged not by dates but in terms of ascending horror. Start with the parrot he kept in a cage in his Kremlin apartment. The dictator had the habit of pacing up and down for long periods of time, smoking his pipe, brooding, and occasionally spitting on the floor. One day the parrot tried to mimic Stalin's spitting. He immediately reached into the cage with his pipe and crushed the parrot's head. A very micro-level event, you might well say, so what? But then you learn that Stalin, while on vacation in the Crimea, was once kept awake by a barking dog. It turned out to be a seeing-eye dog that belonged to a blind peasant. The dog wound up being shot, and the peasant wound up in the Gulag. And then you learn that Stalin drove his independently minded second wife, who tried to talk back to him, into committing suicide. And that he arranged for Trotsky, who also talked back, to be assassinated halfway around the world. And that he arranged as well the deaths of as many of Trotsky's associates that he could reach, as well as the deaths of hundred of thousands of other people who never had anything to do with Trotsky. And that when his own people began to talk back by resisting the collectivization of agriculture, he allowed some fourteen million of them to die from the resulting starvation, exile, or imprisonment. Again, there's self-similarity across scale, except that the scale this time is a body count. It's a fractal geometry of terror. Stalin's character extended across time and space, to be sure, but what's most striking about it is its extension across scale: the fact that his behavior seemed much the same in large matters, small matters, and most of those that lay in between.

(...)because Miss Temple has generally something to say which is newer than my own reflections; her language is singularly agreeable to me, and the information she communicates is often just what I wished to gain.” “Well, then, with Miss Temple you are good?” “Yes, in a passive way: I make no effort; I follow as inclination guides me. There is no merit in such goodness.” “A great deal: you are good to those who are good to you. It is all I ever desire to be. If people were always kind and obedient to those who are cruel and unjust, the wicked people would have it all their own way: they would never feel afraid, and so they would never alter, but would grow worse and worse. When we are struck at without a reason, we should strike back again very hard; I am sure we should—so hard as to teach the person who struck us never to do it again.” “You will change your mind, I hope, when you grow older: as yet you are but a little untaught girl.” “But I feel this, Helen; I must dislike those who, whatever I do to please them, persist in disliking me; I must resist those who punish me unjustly. It is as natural as that I should love those who show me affection, or submit to punishment when I feel it is deserved.” “Heathens and savage tribes hold that doctrine, but Christians and civilised nations disown it.” “How? I don’t understand.” “It is not violence that best overcomes hate—nor vengeance that most certainly heals injury.” “What then?” “Read the New Testament, and observe what Christ says, and how He acts; make His word your rule, and His conduct your example.” “What does He say?” “Love your enemies; bless them that curse you; do good to them that hate you and despitefully use you.

PULL BEATS PUSH Training managers how to give feedback—how to push more effectively—can be helpful. But if the receiver isn’t willing or able to absorb the feedback, then there’s only so far persistence or even skillful delivery can go. It doesn’t matter how much authority or power a feedback giver has; the receivers are in control of what they do and don’t let in, how they make sense of what they’re hearing, and whether they choose to change. Pushing harder rarely opens the door to genuine learning. The focus should not be on teaching feedback givers to give. The focus—at work and at home—should be on feedback receivers, helping us all to become more skillful learners. The real leverage is creating pull. Creating pull is about mastering the skills required to drive our own learning; it’s about how to recognize and manage our resistance, how to engage in feedback conversations with confidence and curiosity, and even when the feedback seems wrong, how to find insight that might help us grow. It’s also about how to stand up for who we are and how we see the world, and ask for what we need. It’s about how to learn from feedback—yes, even when it is off base, unfair, poorly delivered, and frankly, you’re not in the mood.

It is already the fashion to diminish Eliot by calling him derivative, the mouthpiece of Pound, and so forth; and yet if one wanted to understand the apocalypse of early modernism in its true complexity it would be Eliot, I fancy, who would demand one's closest attention. He was ready to rewrite the history of all that interested him in order to have past and present conform; he was a poet of apocalypse, of the last days and the renovation, the destruction of the earthly city as a chastisement of human presumption, but also of empire. Tradition, a word we especially associate with this modernist, is for him the continuity of imperial deposits; hence the importance in his thought of Virgil and Dante. He saw his age as a long transition through which the elect must live, redeeming the time. He had his demonic host, too; the word 'Jew' remained in lower case through all the editions of the poems until the last of his lifetime, the seventy-fifth birthday edition of 1963. He had a persistent nostalgia for closed, immobile hierarchical societies. If tradition is, as he said in After Strange Gods--though the work was suppressed--'the habitual actions, habits and customs' which represent the kinship 'of the same people living in the same place' it is clear that Jews do not have it, but also that practically nobody now does. It is a fiction, a fiction cousin to a myth which had its effect in more practical politics. In extenuation it might be said that these writers felt, as Sartre felt later, that in a choice between Terror and Slavery one chooses Terror, 'not for its own sake, but because, in this era of flux, it upholds the exigencies proper to the aesthetics of Art.' The fictions of modernist literature were revolutionary, new, though affirming a relation of complementarity with the past. These fictions were, I think it is clear, related to others, which helped to shape the disastrous history of our time. Fictions, notably the fiction of apocalypse, turn easily into myths; people will live by that which was designed only to know by. Lawrence would be the writer to discuss here, if there were time; apocalypse works in Woman in Love, and perhaps even in Lady Chatterley's Lover, but not n Apocalypse, which is failed myth. It is hard to restore the fictive status of what has become mythical; that, I take it, is what Mr. Saul Bellow is talking about in his assaults on wastelandism, the cant of alienation. In speaking of the great men of early modernism we have to make very subtle distinctions between the work itself, in which the fictions are properly employed, and obiter dicta in which they are not, being either myths or dangerous pragmatic assertions. When the fictions are thus transformed there is not only danger but a leak, as it were, of reality; and what we feel about. all these men at times is perhaps that they retreated inso some paradigm, into a timeless and unreal vacuum from which all reality had been pumped. Joyce, who was a realist, was admired by Eliot because he modernized myth, and attacked by Lewis because he concerned himself with mess, the disorders of common perception. But Ulysses ,alone of these great works studies and develops the tension between paradigm and reality, asserts the resistance of fact to fiction, human freedom and unpredictability against plot. Joyce chooses a Day; it is a crisis ironically treated. The day is full of randomness. There are coincidences, meetings that have point, and coincidences which do not. We might ask whether one of the merits of the book is not its lack of mythologizing; compare Joyce on coincidence with the Jungians and their solemn concordmyth, the Principle of Synchronicity. From Joyce you cannot even extract a myth of Negative Concord; he shows us fiction fitting where it touches. And Joyce, who probably knew more about it than any of the others, was not at tracted by the intellectual opportunities or the formal elegance of fascism.

Do me a favor,” he said to her, “and stay close to me at all times. If I tell you to get down or to run like hell, you do it. No questions, you just do it, you got that?” A small furrow creased her perfect brow. “I thought I was safe in this town.” “You are.” George shot Harry a what-are-you-doing look behind Alessandra’s back. Harry ignored him. “Humor me,” he told her. “Please? I know you don’t believe this, but Trotta’s a son of a bitch, and he’s known for his persistence.” George opened the door. “Harry just wants an excuse to put his arm around you.” Alessandra glanced quickly at Harry, surprise lighting her eyes. Surprise and something else. Something as hot and electric as lightning. It brought her to life so completely and made her exquisitely beautiful despite the heavy makeup. But as instantly as it appeared, it was gone. Quaffed and shoved back inside. Somewhere down the line she’d learned to hide any excitement, any life, any passion. Someone hadn’t wanted her to be anything more than a pretty bauble. A decorative but unobtrusive piece of art. George closed the door. “If you want, I’ll turn around and you two can kiss.” Harry eviscerated George with his eyes. “George imagines there’s some kind of weird attraction thing between us, Al. But George is wrong. George is dead wrong.” He muttered under his breath, “In fact, George is dead.” He looked at Alessandra. “I’m sorry if he offended you.” “He didn’t. I’m aware that you’re not . . . that we’re not . . . I’m aware.” “Still, that was completely inappropriate.” Harry looked at George again, who was totally amused. “Stupendously, asshole-ishly inappropriate.” “I think we’re all a little punchy.” The ice princess had been replaced by someone softer, someone less certain. Someone he had far more trouble resisting. Someone he did want to kiss. And George knew it, too. The son of a bitch was grinning at him, damn him.

It happens that in our phase of civility, the novel is the central form of literary art. It lends itself to explanations borrowed from any intellectual system of the universe which seems at the time satisfactory. Its history is an attempt to evade the laws of what Scott called 'the land of fiction'-the stereotypes which ignore reality, and whose remoteness from it we identify as absurd. From Cervantes forward it has been, when it has satisfied us, the poetry which is 'capable,' in the words of Ortega, 'of coping with present reality.' But it is a 'realistic poetry' and its theme is, bluntly, 'the collapse of the poetic' because it has to do with 'the barbarous, brutal, mute, meaningless reality of things.' It cannot work with the old hero, or with the old laws of the land of romance; moreover, such new laws and customs as it creates have themselves to be repeatedly broken under the demands of a changed and no less brutal reality. 'Reality has such a violent temper that it does not tolerate the ideal even when reality itself is idealized.' Nevertheless, the effort continues to be made. The extremest revolt against the customs or laws of fiction--the antinovels of Fielding or Jane Austen or Flaubert or Natalie Sarraute--creates its new laws, in their turn to be broken. Even when there is a profession of complete narrative anarchy, as in some of the works I discussed last week, or in a poem such as Paterson, which rejects as spurious whatever most of us understand as form, it seems that time will always reveal some congruence with a paradigm--provided always that there is in the work that necessary element of the customary which enables it to communicate at all. I shall not spend much time on matters so familiar to you. Whether, with Lukács, you think of the novel as peculiarly the resolution of the problem of the individual in an open society--or as relating to that problem in respect of an utterly contingent world; or express this in terms of the modern French theorists and call its progress a necessary and 'unceasing movement from the known to the unknown'; or simply see the novel as resembling the other arts in that it cannot avoid creating new possibilities for its own future--however you put it, the history of the novel is the history of forms rejected or modified, by parody, manifesto, neglect, as absurd. Nowhere else, perhaps, are we so conscious of the dissidence between inherited forms and our own reality. There is at present some good discussion of the issue not only in French but in English. Here I have in mind Iris Murdoch, a writer whose persistent and radical thinking about the form has not as yet been fully reflected in her own fiction. She contrasts what she calls 'crystalline form' with narrative of the shapeless, quasi-documentary kind, rejecting the first as uncharacteristic of the novel because it does not contain free characters, and the second because it cannot satisfy that need of form which it is easier to assert than to describe; we are at least sure that it exists, and that it is not always illicit. Her argument is important and subtle, and this is not an attempt to restate it; it is enough to say that Miss Murdoch, as a novelist, finds much difficulty in resisting what she calls 'the consolations of form' and in that degree damages the 'opacity,' as she calls it, of character. A novel has this (and more) in common with love, that it is, so to speak, delighted with its own inventions of character, but must respect their uniqueness and their freedom. It must do so without losing the formal qualities that make it a novel. But the truly imaginative novelist has an unshakable 'respect for the contingent'; without it he sinks into fantasy, which is a way of deforming reality. 'Since reality is incomplete, art must not be too afraid of incompleteness,' says Miss Murdoch. We must not falsify it with patterns too neat, too inclusive; there must be dissonance.

At least tell me the truth about Blakeborough,” he said hoarsely. “Do you love him?” “Why does it matter?” His eyes ate her up. “If you do, I’ll keep my distance. I’ll stay out of your life from now on.” “You’ve been doing that easily enough for the past twelve years,” she snapped. “I don’t see why my feelings for Edwin should change anything.” “Easily? It was never easy, I assure you.” His expression was stony. “And you’re avoiding the question. Are you in love with Blakeborough?” How she wished she could lie about it. Dom would take himself off, and she wouldn’t be tempted by him anymore. Unfortunately, he could always tell when she was lying. “And if I say I’m not?” “Then I won’t rest until you’re mine again.” The determination in his voice shocked her. Unsettled her. Thrilled her. No! “I don’t want that.” His fingers dug into her arm. “Because you love Blakeborough?” “Because love is a lie designed to make a woman desire what is only a figure of smoke in the wind. Love is too dangerous.” He released a heavy breath. “So you don’t love him.” His persistence sparked her temper, and she pushed free of him. “Oh, for pity’s sake, if you must know, I don’t.” She faced him down. “Not that it matters one whit. I don’t need love to have a good marriage, an amiable marriage. I don’t even want love.” It hurt too much when her heart was trampled upon. Dom had done that once before. How could she be sure he wouldn’t do it again? Eyes gleaming in the firelight, he said in a low voice, “You used to want love.” “I was practically a child. I didn’t know any better. But I do now.” “Do you? I wonder.” He circled her like a wolf assessing its prey’s weaknesses. “Very well, let’s forget about love for the moment. What about passion?” “What about it?” she asked unsteadily as he slipped behind her. Nervous, she edged nearer the impressively massive pianoforte that sat in the center of the room. “What part does passion play in your plan for a safe and loveless marriage?” She pivoted to face him, startled to find that he’d stepped to within a breath of her. “None at all.” He chuckled. “Does Blakeborough know that?” “Not that it’s any of your concern, but Edwin and I have an arrangement. He’ll give me children; I’ll help him make sure Yvette finds a good husband. We both agree that passion is…unimportant to our plans.” “Really?” He raised an eyebrow. “It certainly aids in the production of those children you’re hoping for. To quote a certain lady, ‘You can set a plan in motion, but as soon as it involves people, it will rarely commence exactly as you wish.’ You may not want passion to be important, sweeting, but it always is.” “Not to us,” she said, though with him standing so close her legs felt like rubber and her blood raced wildly through her veins. “Not to me.” With his gaze darkening, he lifted his hand to run his thumb over the pounding pulse at her throat. “Yes, I can tell how unimportant it is to you.” “That doesn’t mean…anything.” “Doesn’t it?” He backed her against the pianoforte. “So the way you trembled in my arms this morning means nothing.” It meant far too much. It meant her body was susceptible to him, even when her mind had the good sense to resist. And curse him to the devil, he knew it. He slipped his hand about her waist to pull her against him. “It means nothing that every time we’re together, we ignite.” “People do not…ignite,” she said shakily, though her entire body was on fire. “What an absurd idea.” She held her breath and waited for his attempt to kiss her, determined to refuse it this time. But he didn’t kiss her. Instead he fondled her breast through her gown, catching her so by surprise that she gasped, then moaned as the feel of his hand caressing her made liquid heat swirl in her belly. Devil take the man.

Here’s why this matters for change: When people try to change things, they’re usually tinkering with behaviors that have become automatic, and changing those behaviors requires careful supervision by the Rider. The bigger the change you’re suggesting, the more it will sap people’s self-control. And when people exhaust their self-control, what they’re exhausting are the mental muscles needed to think creatively, to focus, to inhibit their impulses, and to persist in the face of frustration or failure. In other words, they’re exhausting precisely the mental muscles needed to make a big change. So when you hear people say that change is hard because people are lazy or resistant, that’s just flat wrong. In fact, the opposite is true: Change is hard because people wear themselves out. And that’s the second surprise about change: What looks like laziness is often exhaustion.

Persistence - This is another way to relieve her of any responsibility for what is happening. Of course, don't confuse persistence with begging, arguing, or being pushy, needy, or creepy. All it means is don't give up too easily. Girls may test you to find out how easily you throw in the towel—they want to gauge your self-confidence. Just assume that she is giving a little token resistance, and continue. If she didn't resist at least a little bit, she would feel like a slut—and that's not going to happen. And if you can't take her crap, how in the world are you going to protect her from other people's crap? This can be tricky—an overly aggressive man might misinterpret all resistance as being merely token and could eventually find himself facing a rape charge. However, a man who isn't persistence enough will acquiesce every time a women resists, when in may cases she was secretly hoping he could be a little more forceful.

Persistence is an essential strategy for dealing with resistance, but it is a versatile strategy you should always follow — always keep going as far as you can. If the timing is right and the woman is interested in you and does not put up much if any resistance that means you should not stop just after you get her phone number, but you take her for a date right away, and if that goes well, you do not hesitate to kiss her during the date or to try to take her home to have sex with her either.

Whatever is going on- accept it rather than try to fight it. When you accept what is- then you are free to act. You have the energy to take action. You haven’t used up all of your energy trying to fight and force things into place. What we resist persists. You will know you are in resistance when you look at what you are trying hard to push away and out of your life.

And then there’s Stella. Stella is an interior decorator who’s been in the business for more than a decade. She had a thriving design firm and accolades out the wazoo. And yet, she still felt a niggling need to go to school to get certified. “Why would you want to waste your time doing that?” I asked. “You have a waiting list for your clients.” “Well, I’d feel more legit,” she said. FOR BUSINESS For the love of God and the information highway, please write your bio in first person—we all know you wrote it anyway. One of the most highly trafficked pages on small business websites is the “About” page. People are hiring you, paying attention to you, coming to see you. So they want to hear from… you. “You made more than a hundred grand last year and your clients refer you all the time. Isn’t that legit?” I asked. She was resisting, so I ramped up my persisting. “You know what you should say in your bio?” I said to her. “Say that you’re self-taught, in eighteen-point bold type. Let people know that you never set foot in a design college because you were too busy sewing your own drapes, shopping for textiles with your grandma, and learning how to build cabinets after school with your dad. It’s in your blood. Self-taught says ‘extra amazing.’ Self-taught says ‘natural talent.’ Just come out with it.” She skipped school.

What you resist persists.

I could see Chandler Street back in Philadelphia, where I lived immediately after my divorce. “Your own road has led through some interesting places. That it (Philadelphia) saw the flowing of democracy and freedom (I could see the Declaration of Independence); it was where it started in your land, and it spread throughout the globe. Now it is darkened, it is endangered.” Speak. You Are Permitted. The permission to question. The openness. An unprecedented opportunity to plumb the depths of some of life’s most persistent and challenging questions. A frank conversation… with God… about free will, the need for Christianity, idolatry, Jewish suffering, the Holocaust, the devil, the messiah and the age of the world. It would prove an unforgettable night. October 16, 1987 … Later that night, Rosalyn felt once more that she had to write. Soon she began to speak. "Do you believe what has been written? Do you believe this is that which is penned by you is that which is truth?.... There shall be resistance. There shall be family versus family. There will be much dissension.

Resentment is a natural human response to people and situations that you don’t wish were there in your Life in the first place. So, don’t try to resist resentment, don’t push it away. Anything that you resist, will persist. Instead, examine the futility of feeling resentful against someone or an event or circumstance. Ask yourself if your resentment is serving any Purpose. By your being resentful against someone or with what has happened, can you undo the past, can you transform the individual that has made you feel this way? If you reflect on how you are feeling you will find that you are the one who is cooking within you. To stop the cooking, to escape that miserable feeling, you must let your resentment go, you must dissolve it. Forgiveness is the only way. Forgive the other person, forgive Life, even forgive yourself for having allowed resentment to fester in you …and see how, magically, instantaneously, you feel liberated and happy!

Some temptations, Leo decided hazily, should not be resisted. Because they were so persistent that they would only keep returning, time and again. Therefore such temptations absolutely had to be yielded to—it was the only way to be rid of them. “Damn it,” he said raggedly, “I’ll do it. Even knowing I’ll be annihilated afterward.” “You’ll do what?” Marks asked, her eyes huge. “This.” And his mouth descended to hers. At last, every muscle in his body seemed to sigh. At last. The sensation was so pleasurable that for a moment Leo couldn’t even move, just felt her mouth with his mouth.

Precisely three days after Christopher and Audrey had left for London, Beatrix went to the Phelans’ house to ask after Albert. As she had expected, the dog had set the household into chaos, having barked and howled incessantly, ripped carpeting and upholstery to shreds, and bitten footman’s hand. “And in addition,” the housekeeper, Mrs. Clocker, told Beatrix, “he won’t eat. One can already see his ribs. And the master will be furious if we let anything happen to him. Oh, this is the most trying dog, the most detestable creature I’ve ever encountered.” A housemaid who was busy polishing the banister couldn’t seem to resist commenting, “He scares me witless. I can’t sleep at night, because he howls fit to wake the dead.” The housekeeper looked aggrieved. “So he does. However, the master said we mustn’t let anyone take Albert. And as much as I long to be rid of the vicious beast, I fear the master’s displeasure even more.” “I can help him,” Beatrix said softly. “I know I can.” “The master or the dog?” Mrs. Clocker asked, as if she couldn’t help herself. Her tone was wry and despairing. “I can start with the dog,” Beatrix said in a low undertone. They exchanged a glance. “I wish you could be given the chance,” Mrs. Clocker murmured. “This household doesn’t seem like a place where anyone could get better. It feels like a place where things wane and are extinguished.” This, more than anything, spurred Beatrix into a decision. “Mrs. Clocker, I would never ask you to disobey Captain Phelan’s instructions. However…if I were to overhear you telling one of the housemaids where Albert is being kept at the moment, that’s hardly your fault, is it? And if Albert manages to escape and run off…and if some unknown person were to take Albert in and care for him but did not tell you about it immediately, you could not be blamed, could you?” Mrs. Clocker beamed at her. “You are devious, Miss Hathaway.” Beatrix smiled. “Yes, I know.” The housekeeper turned to the housemaid. “Nellie,” she said clearly and distinctly. “I want to remind you that we’re keeping Albert in the little blue shed next to the kitchen garden.” “Yes, mum.” The housemaid didn’t even glance at Beatrix. “And I should remind you, mum, that his leash is on the half-moon table in the entrance hall.” “Very good, Nellie. Perhaps you should run and tell the other servants and the gardener not to notice if anyone goes out to visit the blue shed.” “Yes, mum.” As the housemaid hurried away, Mrs. Clocker gave Beatrix a grateful glance. “I’ve heard that you work miracles with animals, Miss Hathaway. And that’s indeed what it will take, to tame that flea-ridden fiend.” “I offer no miracles,” Beatrix said with a smile. “Merely persistence.” “God bless you, miss. He’s a savage creature. If dog is man’s best friend, I worry for Captain Phelan.” “So do I,” Beatrix said sincerely.

Don’t you know when to give up?” she snapped. Caleb came up behind her, turned her into his arms, and held her close. “When was the last time you gave up on something you wanted, Lily?” “I never give up. It’s cowardly.” He smiled, his hands resting lightly on the sides of her waist. “Persistence is an admirable quality. Perhaps you’ve noticed that I have it, too.” Lily was desperate for a barrier to throw between them; she was beginning to have thoughts of lying on Mrs. Tibbet’s tablecloth in total surrender. “I couldn’t love a man who keeps a mistress,” she threw out. He withdrew slightly. “What?” “Sandra told me. She said the woman lives in Tylerville.” Caleb looked taken aback, but only for a moment. “She does,” he answered. “But when we parted company, she was talking about going back to San Francisco. She has a prospective husband there.” Lily’s eyes widened. “You parted company?” “Of course,” Caleb replied. “Did you think I was going to go on visiting Bianca while I was seeing you?” “You weren’t faithful to Sandra,” Lily pointed out. “I also wasn’t sleeping with her.” Lily lowered her eyes. “I don’t understand.” Caleb lifted her chin. “Sandra is my little sister’s best friend,” he said gently. “She’s family to the Tibbets. I married her because she was in trouble. Is it getting any clearer?” “You’re really a very honorable man,” Lily allowed with a sigh. Caleb arched an eyebrow. “That’s bad?” “It makes it much harder to resist you.” “Resisting me will prove impossible, Lily.” “You are the most presumptuous—” He turned his head to glance back at the table. “You’d just fit between the biscuits and the butter dish,” he commented idly. Lily resisted an urge to smash his instep with her foot. He’d gotten his way. She was going to agree to let him drive her back to Tylerville. And the reason was simple: If they stayed here, she might end up doing something scandalous. If they were in a moving buggy, there would be less chance of that.

What you resist, persists. What you accept, transforms.

What you resist not only persists, but will grow in size.

She knew she should drop the subject, but something inside her wouldn't let go. She snapped her fingers, couldn't resist. "You could go as a moving man." "Damn, woman." He was on her before she had a chance to step back. He slid his big hands into her hair, none too gently. Held her still. "What's with you? I've asked you nicely to stop. Let up or I'll---" "What?" She moved beyond common sense. He kissed her. His punishment was sexual, unexpected, yet effective. He was all hotness, hardness, and sensual appeal. Sparked by anger, he bit her bottom lip. Sensation puckered her nipples. Her belly pulled tight. Her groin pressed his. Their thighs rubbed. The kiss lasted. She had no desire for it to end. His firm mouth softened. He slipped his tongue between her lips with sexy finesse. The man could kiss. He made her want him. Fully into him, she rose on tiptoe and clutched his biceps. His hands rubbed down her back, cupped her butt, and lifted her slightly, until they were sexually aligned.

The path of self-discipline is riddled with tempting detours, rough patches, and frustrating roadblocks. You need tools to help you weather such challenges. In the face of any temptation, distraction, or impulse, there’s a four-pronged tool you can use to fortify your self-discipline—four illuminating questions you need to immediately ask yourself. “Do I want to be a disciplined person or not?” You can answer this question only with a yes or a no; rationalizations, bargaining, exceptions, and conditions are not allowed. If you put off a task to give in to temptation, the answer must be no. By forcing you to classify yourself in such a black-or-white manner, you become better aware of the ways you might rationalize your lapse in self-discipline. “Am I doing the right thing or simply what’s easy?” Doing the right thing—that is, practicing self-discipline—often means you need to do the hard thing. If you find yourself always taking the path of least resistance, then you’re probably not building discipline and are letting your need for comfort dictate the course of your life. “What am I getting for dessert?” This question is all about calling to mind the reason why you’re sacrificing so much now, the reward at the end of the road. When you lose sight of your purpose, it becomes so much harder to maintain self-control and enjoy the journey on the way to it. Having constant reminders of your goals and making sure those goals are compelling enough for you to persist are ways you can fortify your self-discipline. “Am I being self-aware?” Self-discipline requires self-awareness. If you fail to recognize how you’re making excuses for your laziness or what motivations push you to act, then you will find the practice of self-discipline all that much harder. Meditation, as well as engaging in creative pursuits that get you to focus on the present and cultivate your self-awareness, can help you rise above temptations and stay on track to reach your goals.

We know that resistance not only amplifies our suffering, it also helps lock it into place. What we resist, persists. If you feel anxiety and fight it, you may develop panic disorder. If you feel sad and fight it (especially if you judge yourself for feeling sad), you may become depressed. Typically, emotions have a limited lifespan. They spring up out of a difficult situation, then fade over time.

Pursuing what you feel is right despite resistance is persistence.

What you resist will persist.

As you are reading this book, when your mind inevitably wanders into something else—and that something else is important but not urgent—don’t try to not think of it. What you resist persists. Instead, keep a notebook close by to capture that thought or idea by writing it down. You can thus release it temporarily, to be addressed after the task at hand is complete

The following are the rules through which you may form the habits you desire: At the beginning of the formation of a new habit, put force and enthusiasm into expressing what you want to become. Feel what you think. Remember that you are taking the first steps toward making your new mental paths, and it is much harder at first than it will be afterward. At the beginning, make each path as clear and as deep as you can, so that you can readily see it the next time you wish to follow it. Keep your attention firmly concentrated on your new path-building and forget all about the old paths. Concern yourself only with the new ones that you are building to order. Travel over your newly made paths as often as possible. Create opportunities for doing so, without waiting for them to arise through luck or chance. The more often you go over the new paths, the sooner they will become well-worn and easily traveled. Resist the temptation to travel over the older, easier paths you have been using in the past. Every time you resist a temptation, the stronger you become and the easier it will be for you to do so the next time. But every time you yield to the temptation, the easier it becomes to yield again and the more difficult it becomes to resist the next time. This is the critical time. Prove your determination, persistency, and willpower now, at the very beginning. Be sure you have mapped out the right path as your goal or aim, then go ahead without fear and without allowing yourself to doubt. Select your goal and make good, deep, wide mental paths leading straight to it.

With the importance of resetting the entropy each time a steam engine goes through a cycle, you might wonder what would happen if the entropy reset were to fail. That’s tantamount to the steam engine not expelling adequate waste heat, and so with each cycle the engine would get hotter until it would overheat and break down. If a steam engine were to suffer such a fate it might prove inconvenient but, assuming there were no injuries, would likely not drive anyone into an existential crisis. Yet the very same physics is central to whether life and mind can persist indefinitely far into the future. The reason is that what holds for the steam engine holds for you. It is likely that you don’t consider yourself to be a steam engine or perhaps even a physical contraption. I, too, only rarely use those terms to describe myself. But think about it: your life involves processes no less cyclical than those of the steam engine. Day after day, your body burns the food you eat and the air you breathe to provide energy for your internal workings and your external activities. Even the very act of thinking—molecular motion taking place in your brain—is powered by these energy-conversion processes. And so, much like the steam engine, you could not survive without resetting your entropy by purging excess waste heat to the environment. Indeed, that’s what you do. That’s what we all do. All the time. It’s why, for example, the military’s infrared goggles designed to “see” the heat we all continually expel do a good job of helping soldiers spot enemy combatants at night. We can now appreciate more fully Russell’s mind-set when imagining the far future. We are all waging a relentless battle to resist the persistent accumulation of waste, the unstoppable rise of entropy. For us to survive, the environment must absorb and carry away all the waste, all the entropy, we generate. Which raises the question, Does the environment—by which we now mean the observable universe—provide a bottomless pit for absorbing such waste? Can life dance the entropic two-step indefinitely? Or might there come a time when the universe is, in effect, stuffed and so is unable to absorb the waste heat generated by the very activities that define us, bringing an end to life and mind? In the lachrymose phrasing of Russell, is it true that “all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins”?

Margaret Anderson (1886-1973): I already knew that the great thing to learn about life is, first, not to do what you don’t want to do, and, second, to do what you do want to do. Jane [Heap] and I began talking. We talked for days, months, years… Jane and I were as different as two people can be…. The result of our differences was– Argument. At last I could argue as long as I wanted. Instead of discouraging Jane, this stimulated her. She was always saying that she never found enough resistance in life to make talking worth while– or anything else for that matter. And I had always been confronted with people who found my zest for argument disagreeable, who said they lost in any subject the moment it became controversial. My answer had been that argument wasn’t necessarily controversy…. I had never been able to understand why people dislike to be challenged. For me, challenge has always been the great impulse, the only liberation.

Carl Jung said, ‘What we resist persists.’ Think about it. The more you try to fight something – a craving, a dissatisfaction, a fear – the more it grows and occupies your awareness. It takes root in your heart and mind.

Saying "No" holds what you don't want to you. Saying "Yes" to what you don't want releases your resistance, allowing what you don't want to change. It's counterintuitive, but it's how it works.  When you say, "No, I don't want this," you're resisting, and as you've come to understand, whatever your resist persists.

Everything" I can be an asshole of the grandest kind I can withhold like it's going out of style I can be the moodiest, baby and you've never met anyone Who's as negative as I am sometimes I am the wisest woman you've ever met I am the kindest soul with whom you've connected I have the bravest heart that you've ever seen and you've never met anyone Who's as positive as I am sometimes You see everything, you see every part You see all my light and you love my dark You dig everything of which I'm ashamed There's not anything to which you can't relate And you're still here I blame everyone else, not my own partaking My passive aggressiveness can be devastating I'm terrified and mistrusting and you've never met anyone Who's as closed down as I am sometimes You see everything, you see every part You see all my light and you love my dark You dig everything of which I'm ashamed There's not anything to which you can't relate And you're still here What I resist persists and speaks louder than I know What I resist you love, no matter how low or high I go I am the funniest woman that you've ever known I am the dullest woman that you've ever known I'm the most gorgeous woman that you've ever known and you've never met anyone Who's as everything as I am sometimes You see everything, you see every part You see all my light and you love my dark You dig everything of which I'm ashamed There's not anything to which you can't relate And you're still here (You see everything, you see every part) And you're still here (You see all my light and you love my dark) And you're still here (You dig everything of which I'm ashamed) (There's not anything to which you can't relate) And you're still here Alanis Morissette So Called Chaos (2004)

What you resist persists. Previous traumas that are unresolved or hidden have a significant influence in amplifying current traumatic events and hindering recovery.

Psychologist Carl Jung long ago said that “what you resist not only persists, but will grow in size.

only 1 percent of children in the United States get the proper RDA levels of the essential nutrients from their diets.1Not only are children not getting proper nutrition for their growing bodies, they are establishing poor eating habits in childhood that usually persist into their adult years. It has amazed me how many of these young teenagers already have full-blown insulin resistance.

One mental habit that can wreak havoc in our lives is self-judgment. If you watch your mind for 10 minutes after something goes wrong, you’ll probably notice that you’re criticizing yourself. It’s undoubtedly useful to know what went wrong and to correct our mistakes, but usually we go way beyond that. What can we do about self-judgment? It doesn’t work to “just stop judging yourself” because you’re likely to judge yourself for judging yourself. (Remember, what we resist persists.) The best solution is simply to “witness” judgments, letting them come and go.

I know Carpathians are of the earth, and their healing comes from the earth and all its natural powers. But, Mikhail, perhaps your prejudice and contempt for the human race has made you overlook some of its advantages.” “You persist in thinking me prejudiced. I like many humans.” Mikhail found he couldn’t resist sliding the buttons open on the white silk shirt that covered her bare body. There was something deep within him, a primitive need, that made him want to look at her, to know he could do so whenever he wanted. She smiled at him, sweeping her hair back in her curiously sexy gesture. The action created a gap in the shirt so that her bare skin beckoned, her full breasts thrust toward him invitingly, then disappeared under a cloud of ebony silk. The sight took his breath away. “Listen to me, my love,” Raven murmured. “Having a few friends and feeling affection for certain individuals of a race does not remove prejudice. You have lived with your abilities for so long you take them for granted. Because you can control the human mind, and you use them as cattle.” He gasped, shocked that she could think such a thing. His hand circled her ankle where it was tucked up on the bed. “I have never treated humans like cattle. Many of them are counted among my friends, although Gregori and some of the others think I am crazy. I watch humans grow and wish I could feel the things they feel. No, little one, I do not believe I treat them as cattle.” She tilted her chin, regarding him steadily with her large sapphire eyes. “Perhaps not like cattle, but I feel what you feel, Mikhail. You can hide this from yourself, but I can see it clearly.” She smiled to soften her words. “I know you don’t want to feel superior, but it is so easy to control us.

What you resist not only persists, but will grow in size.” The opposite is often also true: When we push for something, such as someone entering recovery or choosing to be in a relationship with us, we actually push those things away.

Continetti concludes: "An intellectual, financial, technological, and social infrastructure to undermine global capitalism has been developing for more than two decades, and we are in the middle of its latest manifestation… The occupiers’ tent cities are self-governing, communal, egalitarian, and networked. They reject everyday politics. They foster bohemianism and confrontation with the civil authorities. They are the Phalanx and New Harmony, updated for postmodern times and plopped in the middle of our cities. There may not be that many activists in the camps. They may appear silly, even grotesque. They may resist "agendas" and "policies." They may not agree on what they want or when they want it. And they may disappear as winter arrives and the liberals whose parks they are occupying lose patience with them. But the utopians and anarchists will reappear… The occupation will persist as long as individuals believe that inequalities of property are unjust and that the brotherhood of man can be established on earth." You can see why anarchists might find this sort of thing refreshingly honest. The author makes no secret of his desire to see us all in prison, but at least he’s willing to make an honest assessment of what the stakes are. Still, there is one screamingly dishonest theme that runs throughout the Weekly Standard piece: the intentional conflation of "democracy" with "everyday politics," that is, lobbying, fund-raising, working for electoral campaigns, and otherwise participating in the current American political system. The premise is that the author stands in favor of democracy, and that occupiers, in rejecting the existing system, are against it. In fact, the conservative tradition that produced and sustains journals like The Weekly Stand is profoundly antidemocratic. Its heroes, from Plato to Edmund Burke, are, almost uniformly, men who opposed democracy on principle, and its readers are still fond of statements like "America is not a democracy, it’s a republic." What’s more, the sort of arguments Continetti breaks out here--that anarchist-inspire movements are unstable, confused, threaten established orders of property, and must necessarily lead to violence--are precisely the arguments that have, for centuries. been leveled by conservatives against democracy itself. In reality, OWS is anarchist-inspired, but for precisely that reason it stands squarely in the very tradition of American popular democracy that conservatives like Continetti have always staunchly opposed. Anarchism does not mean the negation of democracy--or at least, any of the aspects of democracy that most American have historically liked. Rather, anarchism is a matter of taking those core democratic principles to their logical conclusions. The reason it’s difficult to see this is because the word "democracy" has had such an endlessly contested history: so much so that most American pundits and politicians, for instance, now use the term to refer to a form of government established with the explicit purpose of ensuring what John Adams once called "the horrors of democracy" would never come about. (p. 153-154)