Resistance is futile

How many times do we hear ourselves, and others, say things like, "I'm really going to change the way I do things at work." I was talking with someone the other day who was commenting on his iterative process of failure. It seemed that no matter what plan he put into place, he found himself doing the same unproductive things with his time. As we talked about it, he made a funny face and, using a voice that simulated an alien from a sci fi movie, said, "Get used to being a dolt. Stop trying to change. Resistance is futile."

He thought back (not too far back) on things that he had tried to change and said, "If I approach things from the perspective of resisting the temptation to fall into the old habit, I usually fail. There might be a brief period of success, but failure is tenacious. It has all the time in the world to wait for me to get tired of resisting, or to forget about it. Either way, I eventually lose. Resistance is futile."

I asked him if he ever succeeded. He said that he has won at times; and that the recipe is always simple. Getting the ingredients together, however, is the more difficult part. Actually, there is only one ingredient - commitment. Some might argue that one makes a 'commitment' to resist during those brief periods of success. But that is not what I mean by commitment. I am not talking about committing to change. I am talking about committing to a different way of being. In that new way of being, there is nothing to resist. The option of engaging the old ways does not exist in the same way. When the commitment is clear, the insufficiencies of the old ways seem so glaring that there is no longer any temptation.

If, on the other hand, the commitment is to resist the temptation of the old ways, when one succeeds in resisting, one is left with more of the same. Each successful resistance leads to the opportunity to resist the next time. What kind of life is that where the focus is on resistance? This perspective focuses on "the problem" and our resistance to it. That way of thinking, however, has the potential for creating a problem-focused way of living. We are always moving away from something.

Taking an appreciative approach to life puts our desired future as something we are moving toward. It is based on our past successes, so we can be encouraged that it is possible. The focus of our past success is not just any old success, but one that rated as a big one - a peak experience.

There are a number of books written on this process called "appreciative inquiry." It grew out of the work of David Cooperrider at Case Western Reserve University and has influenced a wide range of professional areas like organizational change, coaching, and personal development. One of the books I found helpful for guiding personal growth is Appreciative Coaching.

If you want to go right to the source, get Cooperrider's book. Either one will help you see things differently so that your commitments to change might be more easily made and maintained.