Take the Path of MOST Resistance

by Darren Hardy

In The Compound Effect I explain how the results in your life are rooted in one single factor - your choices.

Like it or not, good or bad, your accumulated choices have added up to your current waistline, business success, relationship strength and bank balance. Your choices created your problems and the only way out of them is to start, and stick to, making new choices.

But then you ask, How do I know what the right choices are?

Here's a simple formula:
When in doubt, choose the harder task or what you don't want to do - that's usually exactly what you should do. Take the path of MOST resistance.
Put it this way: If you are disappointed in any area of your life, whatever choices you have been making aren't working.

Definition of insanity:
Doing the same things you've always done and expecting different results.
Here is the force you are fighting: You and your brain are creatures of habit. You simply talk yourself into taking the easy, low resistance and comfortable route. Like the pull of a rushing river, your unconscious habits continue to take you downstream in the wrong direction. To change your direction you will need to swim upstream, against the resistance of the rushing river, against your habitual tendency.

Low Resistance:

• Going along with the gossip
• Surrendering to peer pressure
• Saying yes to needless obligations
• Submitting to the crying demands of your children
• Starting your new program on "Monday" (instead of today)
• Reacting in anger
• Holding a grudge
• Giving the 'silent treatment'

High Resistance:

• Going to the gym when you don't feel like it
• Forgiving someone who wronged you
• Feeling the fear and doing it anyway
• Admitting you were wrong and apologizing
• Ordering the salad when you want the burger
• Saying no to (yet another) shot of tequila
• Calling that big, scary big prospect (again and again)

If you want to finally obtain what's missing from your life, you need to stop always doing what you feel like doing and start doing the things that make you uncomfortable, the stuff you avoid, and the things that you think are hard.

If you dedicate yourself to only doing the things you don't want to do, all day long, your results would shock and amaze you and everyone around you.

Make a list of the things you avoid, postpone and hate doing, but you know you should. If you attack those today, your life will change. What's uncomfortable is good.

It only feels wrong at the start because you have an automatic bias toward the easy. Fight that tendency. Swim upstream. Take the path of most resistance.