Using Resistance To Your Advantage: Conquer Your Struggles

Most people run away from resistance. 

There’s a reason for the expression, “the path of least resistance.”‘

But it’s actually a bad thing to steer away from these difficulties. 

Today, we’re going to talk about how to use resistance to your advantage. 

Using resistance to your advantage means stepping away from the emotion of situation. Use discipline to lean into what you learn from the experience that makes you and your business unique.

Let’s dive in, friends, and learn how to make lemonade from these lemons. 

The Problem: Resistance In Business

I say, “problem,” but by the end, you may agree with me that it’s not actually a problem. 

Now, we all have plenty of resistance in our lives. 

We’ve created some ourselves, by the way, as leaders.

Many times we have teams that can create resistance. 

We have vendors that can create resistance. 

We’ve got a competitor competition, a whole economy, all kinds of different things, creating problems, creating resistance. 

It’s all over. 

We can wallow in it and struggle against it. We can give up in the face of it. 

It’s even possible to run away and choose a different path. 

But today, we’re going to jump into how we can utilize this resistance.

If there was a way to turn this resistance to an advantage, would you want to?

Does this sound good to you?

Do you want to take a perceived negative and turn it into something incredibly powerful?

Of course, you do!

That’s why you’re investing the time spent minutes with me here reading this article. 

What’s In An Advantage?

Let’s look at the title of this article: “Using Resistance To Your Advantage.” 

Look at the word “advantage.”

What does an advantage mean?

Why do we seek an advantage? 

I have studied the human brain a lot and look at subconscious programming. Our subconscious mind is one of the most amazing computers on the planet. 

We’re always looking for more different CPUs and the new iPhone or the new Blackberry. Maybe I’m dating myself by name-dropping Blackberry, but you get the idea. 

I don’t know that much about computers, but guess what? 

I know a little bit about human performance and how we gain advantages in thinking and working.  

How are our brains and our business going to run better? How’s it going to run faster? 

The Human Mind As An Advantage

This human mind right here is incredible. 

The challenge is to get our program running how it’s supposed to. To focus on progress and creation, then putting garbage in and garbage out. 

Like many committees you’ve seen before, am I right?

The same is true with our minds. 

Our subconscious mind is designed to seek advantages, right? 

There are two main points to your brain or your mind. 

One job of the mind is to keep you alive. 

Without getting too off-topic (this is a whole other article), your mind exists to keep you alive based on your program. 

Your routines feed your mind’s program, and when in doubt, you run based on the program. 

This is why healthy habits are essential. 

You wonder how someone can get up and run every single morning. 

It’s not work for them; it’s a habit. 

The other job of the mind is to find ways to work better and more effectively. 

This is where your mind program finds advantages. 

These advantages become habits. 

Once this is set, you have your mind-program keep doing the things you need to be successful. 

Do We Want Advantages? 

Hell yes. 

A significant place to draw these from is resistance. 

I want to just look at that. 

We’re seeking advantages in business. 

We’re seeking unique advantages, so we stand out differently from our “competition.” 

An advantage is that our clients have no reason to go somewhere else. 

“Wow, they have a unique advantage. I want to work with them.” 

I want that for you, and I want that for your team. 

It all comes down to your behavior, performance, goals, accomplishments, things you do around finance relationships, and your health. 

The resistance we find, if we embrace it and learn from it, gives us an advantage in all those areas. 

Why Do We Shy Away From Resistance?

When we seek these advantages, why is it that we get frustrated with resistance? 

The challenge is in your emotion. Your emotion is what makes resistance difficult. 

A swimmer may find resistance in cutting through the water, but they don’t get mad at the water. They use the water to propel them forward. 

Why do we do the same with resistance?

We do a lot for emotion, and here’s something that you might want to write down. 

That is the challenge. 

Common sense isn’t sexy. It’s not fun. It’s really dull. And it’s really humdrum. 

Here’s the reality. 

Boring wins. Boring creates success. 

When I methodically get involved in my retirement plan in my 20s, and I continue to boringly put in the money, all of a sudden I’m a millionaire in 20-something years because I’ve been putting money consistently. 

That’s boring, but it works. 

It creates the results that we want. 

Turning Resistance Into Advantage

Now, when we talk about resistance, let’s look at the resistance in a couple of scenarios. 

Scenario 1:

My friends want to go out. 

I want to have that extra money in my budget. 

I want to go out to eat. 

You know what? I want to go on trips.

There’s certain resistance in that. 

It’s easy to pick one or the other and write off the rest. 

Why? Because it’s work emotionally to balance everything you want. 

Put in the work, gain an advantage. 

Scenario 2: 

II want to change my body, my physique. 

I go to the gym, and I do curls, pushups, and I bench press.

I create all this resistance, and it builds muscle. 

Guess what? That doesn’t make me mad. 

Business Resistance

Resistance pops up in business too: 

• When I get challenged in business
• When I have an economy turn on me
• If my investing schedule gets interrupted
• When I have trouble attracting new team members to my business 

There’s a resistance there, but now I want to get mad. 

Why is that? 

Why don’t we take that resistance and use it to our advantage? 

Let’s say: 

Man, I’m going to utilize this. 

Guess what? 

Some people back in 2008 drew a line in the sand and went through a lot of pain. 

And they said: 

I’m going to use this resistance as an advantage. I’m going to change how I operate financially and change my level of risk. 

What My Uncle Taught Me About Resistance

I had two uncles, great mentors of mine. One of them always told me the same thing. 

I got into business in 1994. 

I was 23 years old, and I became an entrepreneur. 

Since then, I’ve never taken a check from a company as an employee. 

In 94, we went crazy. Good stuff!  

We had a little pullback in 1998. 

Then 2001 happens, and then we’re just in this fantastic economy. 

One of my uncles kept on saying, “hang in there, Kenny, you haven’t operated through a recession yet. You haven’t gone through a recession yet.” 

I used to take offense. 

So what do you think? I can’t do it. 

Give me a recession, and I’ll prove you wrong. 

Post-2008 Kenny knows what he meant by it now. 

What’s fascinating is when we look at resistance, we can use it in two ways:

We get frustrated, and we blame. 

We co-create the blame game while it’s in the market. 

• It’s the economy. 
• There’s no good people out there. 
• Millennials are lazy. 

All these BS stories that we tell ourselves. 

Or we turn the resistance to an advantage.

We can say: 

“Man, there’s resistance in the marketplace. Guess what? Maybe millennials are smarter than I was at their age.” 

Have you ever thought about that? 

Maybe they solve problems quicker, better, easier, and want a different quality of life than their baby boomers parents displayed to them by grudgingly going into a job that they didn’t love most of their lives. 

What about that? 

How can I use resistance to my advantage? 

My Childhood Resistance

I’m so blessed and grateful for the way that I grew up in Western Colorado. 

I went to a small school called Palisade High School in Western Colorado. 

When I was a sophomore in high school, there was a karate instructor named Moe. 

Moe would come to football practice and just kind of watch. 

I wasn’t great at football, let’s be honest. 

I don’t have the physique. On top of this, I didn’t have the desire and didn’t like hitting people. 

But still, Moe would come and scout around the practice. He would watch, and he would look to see who’s really playing full out. 

Though I wasn’t very good at the game, he saw that I played full out. 

He saw that I gave it all I had. 

If he saw some of these characteristics in you, he would handpick you to join his karate class.

In this small town, it operated in the back of a vet clinic. 

All you had to do is bring Gatorade. 

But I remember dreading karate class because it was so much more challenging than football practice. 

If I did a specific move and my hand twisted, or my foot went out of place, Moe all over us. 

“Oh my gosh, what are you?” 

He would walk around with a stick and hit you on the leg. 

“Why isn’t it there?” 

Moe was teaching us discipline, and we all gained belts on belts. 

Well, I never got my black belt, but many did. And I improved too. 

He gave us resistance and taught us how to lean into and gain an advantage.

Final Thoughts 

You never know where resistance can show up to help you. 

At that time, I knew I was learning discipline, but I didn’t know what it would mean to me. 

Then I lost my way a little bit. I ran from the resistance. 

I let my emotions stop me. 

College was hard, and that frustrated me. So I quit.

After I dropped out of college, I ended up in trouble with the law a little bit. 

Then I joined the United States army. 

When I got to boot camp, I watched people come to boot camp that didn’t have the discipline that Moe taught me. 

I recognized the resistance Moe showed me for the first time, and I knew how it could pay off. 

Looking at those kids who didn’t have it, I went: 

Wow! I have more resistance going to karate class, my sophomore, junior, and senior year of high school than I did going through United States Army boot camp. 

That was a resistance that I then used to my advantage. 

I remember being in the first Gulf War in Saudi Arabia and thinking about Moe. 

I thought about controlling my mind and thinking about discipline. 

Though I was in a place of insane resistance, I turned it into an advantage with discipline. 

What about you? 

What about your team? 

Does this affect your life? 

What about your company? 

What about your finances? 

Does it affect your health? 

What about your relationships? 

Where do you have a resistance that you can turn into an advantage? 

My friend, it’s your responsibility. 

It’s your time!

You’ve got more. I want it. 

Don’t hide from it, and don’t let your emotions run you away from it. 

Now go step into your greatness and make it a better-than-fantastic week.