The Fight You’ll Never Win - and Why You Shouldn’t

There’s a fight that nearly all of us are in, that consumes much of our lives, that wears us down and depletes our energy. And it’s one that we’re never going to win because it’s with ourselves.

In this article, I’ll describe exactly what that fight is, why we get into it, why not winning it is a blessing, and what to do instead.

I have a client who - like all my clients - wants to change something about themselves. They want to feel differently about their circumstances, they want to feel less frustrated, angry, depressed, anxious and more happy, engaged, fulfilled and alive. Sounds familiar - yes, I could do with some of that too! Couldn’t we all?

But there is a problem. And it’s based on the notion that there is something wrong with us, that these feelings are dysfunctional, that we are broken and need fixing. Now, whilst that belief prevails - and it is a belief - it will inform your entire experience and it will condition the way you feel about everything, yourself included.

So in that respect, there is nothing wrong or broken - this is the power of belief. The human mind is engineered in such a way that our experience of life is governed by our beliefs. If we believe that our existence is a miserable one because of all the adversity in our lives, that is exactly what we experience. The reverse is also true. All we have to do is choose the belief.

OK, so what about all the problems in the world just now - are they not real? The answer to that is that they are as real as you believe them to be. That is not to deny or belittle other people’s experience of the world - we all have to honour what others are feeling. You can argue with what people think, but not with their feelings.

Attention amplifies belief. So the more you attend to your belief, the more you’ll see it in action - reflected in your experience - and the more you’ll feel the emotions around it.

Last night, a 20 yr old - Maya Joint - beat Serena Williams at Wimbledon. In her post-match interview she said “I’ve been dreaming about this moment since I was a little kid”

Steven Bartlett, the Diary of a CEO podcaster and entrepreneur, said in a recent interview: “The thing that was a gift from god, was I always believed…  There Was No Way I Wasn't Going to Be Successful”

I am not urging you to go out and emulate what these people have done. They are no more than examples of what happens when you invest the power of attention in a belief. The world does not care what the belief is - it is utterly neutral in that respect and fully honours your choice, whatever it is.

Humans have the free will to pay attention to whatever they want. If it doesn’t already exist in the world of form, they can pay attention to it in the world of the imagination. And as soon as you do that, it initiates a process which - if attention is maintained - starts to create the conditions in which the object of imagination begins to manifest in form. This is law and without it, human life would not exist.

The fight that many of us are engaged in is also governed by this law. If we believe that life is out to get us, that everything is difficult, that people are selfish and that we are powerless to change our circumstances, life says amen to that - which just means ‘let it be’.

The fight is always based on the premise that how we feel is down to the circumstances we find ourselves in. Whereas, the truth is that our circumstances do no more than reflect back what we believe. When those beliefs are negative, the attendant feelings are also negative and create a disconnect between how you want to feel and the reality you experience.

The fight is the attempt to change whilst believing - to a greater or lesser extent -  that it is not possible. And whilst that belief is held - guess what - it isn’t possible! Life is just giving you the experience of your belief, for as long as you believe it.

So there is nothing wrong, dysfunctional or broken about any of this - it is all a perfectly natural consequence of what you choose to believe - and it couldn’t be any other way.

Which begs the question, how to move away from negative emotion into positive ones?

The first step is to stop fighting - after all, it’s a fight (like all fights) that you’ll never win. Instead, accept for now that how you’re feeling is a perfectly natural consequence of what you're believing. Replace struggle with acceptance.

The next step is to explore your beliefs and begin to see which beliefs are associated with your emotions. Ask yourself the question: what is the belief I am holding that is making me feel this way?

The third step is to begin realising that you are not seeing things as they are but rather through a lens of interpretation, mindset, preference, belief and bias which are all necessary for survival. There is nothing wrong with any of these, providing there is a growing awareness of the way they condition your experience of life.

And if you’re wondering what this has to do with leadership, I would ask: “what doesn’t it have to do with leadership?” Leadership is about moving towards a goal and taking others with you. The clearer your vision, the more powerful your action. Just like the tennis player and the entrepreneur I mentioned earlier.

If you’d like to explore your leadership from an inside-out perspective, try my: Are you Leading or Just Managing Scorecard, link in the description.

Thank you for reading and do subscribe to my channels if you enjoyed it.

See you in the next one.