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Your Entire Life Changes When You Realise Fighting Reality Doesn’t Work
“What you resist not only persists but will grow in size.” — Carl Jung
“What you resist, persists.” Psychologist Carl Jung said that. He spent his entire career understanding the human psyche. I take his wisdom seriously. Fighting reality doesn’t work. You will always lose. The only way out is personal agency. Action by action. Otherwise, you keep suffering and wasting time. We all fight reality in dozens of ways. Sometimes you want or wish the past were different. You spend time in your head and think of the many ways your life should have turned out. More often than not, you insist your body, boss, family, or the economy behave a certain way. You obsess over an ex who left three years ago, wishing that reality was different. You make a mistake. But keep punishing yourself for something you cannot go back and fix. You have less money than you need. And obsess over how unfair your circumstances are. You wage a silent, furious war against what has already happened. Some of these experiences are genuinely difficult.
Some are unfair.
But if you are not in the business of changing your life action by action, you are wasting time. Suffering and being miserable. We all suffer more doing this. You are fighting reality. And reality is…
