In manifesting, resistance comes when we have subconscious beliefs that are in conflict with what we desire to achieve. Resistance is basically a counteracting force, and if it is too strong, it will overpower the desires that we are trying to manifest.
In this article, we will discuss how to overcome resistance, opening the gateway for desirable manifestations.
This is the short version:
Having a feeling of resistance is an indication that your subconscious mind is holding opposing ideas that overpower your attempt to manifest.
Based on my own experiences and successes with manifesting, this is how to overcome resistance:
- Noticing The Resistance When It Appears
- Accepting The Resistance Without Fighting It
- Finding The Beliefs That Cause The Resistance
- “Healing” The Subconscious While In Meditation
- Continuing To Give Power To The Desire Through Affirmation and Visualization
We will look at all this in a lot more detail later on. But first, I want to give a more comprehensive description of resistance and its role in manifesting.
What is Resistance in Manifestation?
Resistance means any thought, feeling, emotion, or belief that stands in the way of the things that you want to manifest. For example, if you want to manifest a particular job but deep down you hold the idea that you do not “deserve” that job or that the job is too ”big” for you, there would be resistance. Your intention is to manifest a job, but the hurdle of negative thoughts block the way.
So, if the internal resistance within you is too strong, it stops your manifestations.
Resistance basically shows itself in feelings in some way tell you that ”you can’t do this.” You have a particular desire, but when you pursue it, the ”I can’t” feeling comes up, stopping you in your tracks.
Resistance comes from the conflict within your subconscious mind. There are two or more ideas that clash with each other. Your want or intention keeps crashing into “I can’t” thoughts.
Overcoming resistance is not just about building up more energy and power through it. A much better way is actually to lower the resistance. In fact, trying to build up more energy will often end up in strengthening the resistance even more.
Lowering resistance is done by first discovering the ideas or beliefs that are at the root of it. Resistance often shows itself in the form of negative and reoccurring thought patterns or feelings of despair or hopelessness. By observing and analyzing these patterns, you can identify your subconscious negative ideas causing the resistance, and from there, you can work on eradicating them.
We will be taking a more practical look at how to overcome resistance a bit later on.
How Resistance Interferes with Manifestation
It’s important to remember that we cannot pick and choose what ideas will manifest. If we have an idea in our subconscious mind saying ”I can” and another saying ”I cannot,” the stronger of the two will always win to the degree in which it is stronger than the weaker one. If the ”I can” idea is only slightly stronger than the ”I cannot” idea, the external manifestation will be a mixture of the two – the desired result came, but maybe it came really slowly, or it may come in a way that was not as good as expected. On the other hand, if the ”I cannot” idea is stronger, then the desired manifestation cannot appear.
Let’s use a practical example to illustrate this – pretend that your desire is a particular job that you feel is just right for you. To manifest this, you might opt for techniques like visualization, affirmation, or simply feeling the accomplishment of your desire. Yet, lurking beneath the surface in the depths of your subconscious, you have beliefs that say, “This job is too good for me,” “I’m not cut out for this,” or “Things never go my way.” Now ask yourself, which belief system holds more power within you?
If the opposing beliefs are too strong, there is simply too much resistance for you to implant your desire successfully. Your mindset is basically, “I want this job, but I can’t have it because…,” and your goal of “having this job” gets overpowered almost the instant it’s implanted in the subconscious.
The resistance quenches the life of your desire, killing it off. From this, it becomes clear that the process of manifesting is not only giving power to the desire but also removing obstructive ideas.
In fact, strong resistance can actually cause you to send inverted ”energy” to the desire. If you already feel that you cannot achieve your desire, your visualizations, affirmations, etc., are probably filled with tension and strenuous effort. Again, your state of mind is, ”I am trying to do this, but I cannot.”
Later on in this article, we will look at how to overcome resistance. But first, I want to give some examples.
Identifying Resistance
Being aware of the resistance is the first step in eliminating it. Resistance comes in many forms. I will list the ones I have found to be the most important.
Doubt is perhaps the main cause of resistance. You may doubt that your particular desire is even possible, you may doubt whether or not you “should” or are “meant to” attain your desire, or you may even doubt that manifesting is real. Doubt is a thing in the subconscious, and it shows itself as constant self-questioning in your mind. Every time you try and manifest something, the doubts pop up saying, “Are you sure you can do this?” “Do you really deserve this?” and so on.
For now, simply just try and analyze yourself; what are the main doubts that you hold within you? Where do these doubts come from? Why do you have these doubts? Later on, I will give more practical advice on how this is overcome, but the mere act of recognition is a big step.
Resistance can also manifest as recurring negative thoughts or self-talk. As alluded to before, you will often find yourself falling into doubtful and worrisome self-talk. This is another indication of resistance. By observing how you mentally talk to yourself and others and how you react to various situations, you can work out what beliefs are at the bottom of it.
Resistance also surfaces as a feeling of strain and effort. When you’re doing your visualizations or affirmations, you will very likely feel a strange tension within you. It’s hard to describe, but it feels like your attempt at trying to “give energy” to your desire is counteracted by an opposing force, almost like you’re swimming upstream or something. This is a sign of inner discord in your subconscious mind – two incompatible ideas clashing against each other.
Lastly, resistance also shows itself in the lack of progress. You might be doing all the “right” things – visualizing, affirming, and feeling as if your desire has already manifested, but if you’re getting no results, it means that you subconsciously hold opposing ideas. It’s important to remember that it is the ideas in the subconscious part of you that manifests, so you may not realize the inner conflict.
So, we have now looked at some of the indicators of resistance. Let’s now look at what you can actually do about it.
How Effort Reinforces Resistance
Most people have the tendency to try even harder when facing an obstacle. Here, many people make the mistake of trying to overpower resistance with a strong effort of will.
It’s important to remember we are dealing within the realm of our subconscious mind, and our job is merely to give suggestions more than it is to provide the power. Counterintuitively, trying to power through the resistance actually strengthens the negative belief causing the resistance. You are in effect, reinforcing the fact that you’re up against a strong force. If you feel the need to use a strong act of will, you are suggesting to the subconscious mind that the negative idea you are trying to overcome is really strong. And if you then use even more willpower, you end up making the resistance even stronger.
In my experience, willpower is never the way when it comes to manifesting. It’s always about interaction with the subconscious mind and letting it do the construction and the manifesting in its own way.
How To Overcome Resistance
Let’s now look at what you actually need to do in order to overcome resistance. Remember, resistance is a mental blockage inhibiting your manifesting ability. There’s an idea in the subconscious mind that does not allow for your desired idea to take root and grow into realization.
1) Being Aware of Resistance
Simply acknowledging and noticing the resistance when you feel it comes to the surface is a big step in eliminating it. To remove resistance, you need to become aware of it and where it comes from.
When you feel that resistance (whether it’s unease, doubt, worry, insecurity, negative self-talk, etc.), pay attention to it, observe it. You can dig deeper later on, but simply observing it as if it were a “thing” in your mind detaches you from it. Simply notice the resistance, and realize that it comes from some deeper belief.
Recognizing resistance doesn’t mean you are giving in to it. On the contrary, it’s a positive step forward. It tells you there’s something to be addressed. Just as a doctor cannot treat a condition without first diagnosing it, you cannot dissolve your resistance without first acknowledging it.
2) Stopping The “Fight” Against Resistance
When you’re overcoming resistance, you need to go to the root cause of the problem. Fighting resistance is like fighting a shadow or fighting the smoke rather than extinguishing the fire.
In fact, fighting it will only amplify it. If you have a “combative” attitude, you are effectively just suggesting to yourself that there is something to struggle against, making the struggle progressively harder and harder. Shift your mindset from combativeness to acceptance. The feeling of resistance is not the enemy; it is only an indication that you have subconscious beliefs that are clashing with your desire.
For example, if when you’re working on manifesting and a feeling saying, “this can’t happen,” bubbles up, don’t fight it. Instead, acknowledge it and accept that it is there.
3) Identifying Beliefs Within You
Resistance appears because you have one or more negative beliefs or ideas in your subconscious that opposite what you are trying to manifest. If you’re able to identify some of them, you will have an easier time uprooting them, and thus eliminating the resistance.
It’s not always easy to find your beliefs. It is done through introspection, through self-observation, and an analysis of when and why you feel, think, and act the way you do in various situations. It is a process of self-exploration.
I also talk more about how to get rid of limiting beliefs in this article.
Pay attention to how you feel when you’re trying to manifest a particular desire of yours. Imagine you want to manifest improvement in your financial life. You’re visualizing, affirming, meditation, and so on, but there’s this nagging feeling of doubt that just won’t go away.
Analyze it. Ask yourself what it is within you that makes me doubt that I can do it. Have you always struggled with money and thus concluded that “I am doomed to be poor”? Do you feel that you “don’t deserve wealth” or that “money doesn’t come easily?”
Maybe it’s more of a general belief. Do you simply feel that “life is meant to be a struggle” or that “manifesting is simply too good to be true”?
It can also be helpful to mentally look through your past. Most of our strongest can be traced back to our childhood.
As a hint, our beliefs are often there to keep us “safe” – to keep us in your little comfort bubble of familiarity. Generally speaking, the mind prefers the comfortable, even if it gets and opportunity for something better.
You have to be honest with yourself when you’re trying to identify your beliefs – even if you discover things you don’t particularly like.
Even if you don’t feel that you can pinpoint and particular beliefs, you will still get a clearer view of your subconscious environment. You can, therefore, more easily impress new ideas upon, whcih we will talk about next.
4) “Healing” the Subconscious in Meditation
The subconscious mind is the inner power that underlies our reality. To get new results, we need to impress new ideas upon it so that it manifests different things for us. It also follows that the subconscious holds a limiting belief, then impressing a new desirable idea is met with resistance as the two ideas oppose each other.
If you “heal” the subconscious, or loosen or eradicate the negative ideas within it, then we can more easily impress new desirable ideas upon it.
Meditation is a great way to get in touch with the subconscious. It reduces the barrier of the critical conscious mind and the tide of the subconscious rises. The subconscious is responsive to our suggestions, so when you meditate, you can more easily impress a new idea upon it.
When in meditation, forth a negative belief you’re aware of and mentally work on replacing it with a positive, empowering one. You may have the belief that, “I don’t deserve success.” You can then declare to your subconscious that “I am worthy and capable of achieving success.” This will take power away from the old belief and give more power to a better one.
5) Keep Visualizing And Affirming the Accomplishment of Your Desire
As a continuation of healing in the subconscious, the work does not stop at addressing and reworking particular limiting beliefs you have found within yourself. It’s equally important to constantly give power to the thing you want to manifest through visualization, affirmation, or any other manifesting technique.
You can learn more about these two techniques in my article on visualization and in my article on affirmations.
Again both visualization and affirmations are more effective in meditation as the tide of the subconscious is high.
As you strengthen the idea of your desire, it automatically usurps the limiting beliefs in the way. Just like a plant taking up more nutrients and sunlight, a nourished idea grows stronger while also weakening its competitors.
Overcoming resistance is essentially a journey of replacing the ideas in your subconscious mind, healing it from limiting ideas. By following these steps, you will remove the root of the resistance, and your manifestations will become more and more unhindered. Remember, the key is to shift your perspective on resistance, viewing it not as an insurmountable obstacle but rather as an indication of a deeper problem.
Conclusion
Resistance springs from limiting ideas in the subconscious clashing with your intention to manifest something.
Identify when and where you feel resistance, but don’t fight it – observe it and accept it. Do not try an overpower it with willpower.
Meditation gives you clearer access to the subconscious, and it enables you to replace the limiting beliefs with better ones. As the limiting ideas within the subconscious gradually fade away, the resistance will begin to disappear.
I hope you found this article helpful. Thanks for reading!
