Resistance is futile
Or how to win by letting things go.

WE ARE THE BORG. LOWER YOUR SHIELDS AND SURRENDER YOUR SHIPS. WE WILL ADD YOUR BIOLOGICAL AND TECHNOLOGICAL DISTINCTIVENESS TO OUR OWN. YOUR CULTURE WILL ADAPT TO SERVICE US. RESISTANCE IS FUTILE.
You may know this quote from the Star Trek universe. It is a message said by the Borgs — a rather hostile alien race — when they are about to attack another spaceship.
But for all the apparent hostility of their message, it still contains one very good piece of wisdom. Let me explain.
Forcing your way through conflicts
Imagine the scene: you are behind the wheel after a long day of work, in a hurry to get home. You stop at a light on a two-lanes street when another driver arrives at your level, in one of those expensive sedans.
The road shrinks to one lane ahead, the light is about to turn green and you sense already that the driver has no intention of being second. You don't either: you had a rough day, why would that guy have any priority over you?
The light goes green and you accelerate as fast as you can. The other driver does the same. The speed — or is it "ego"? — contest has begun.
Of course, nature's rules are very clear: only one of you at most can have their way. You can't both be first, which means there are really two possible outcomes.
You "lose"
As the road tightened, you got scared and decided to concede the way. You didn't do it out of good will, but rather because you felt you didn't have a choice, that you were endangering yourself or taking too many risks.
You are angry at the situation, angry at the other driver and more importantly, angry at yourself for "losing" the fight. And as if it wasn't enough, you will have a constant reminder of your failure driving in front of you for the next few minutes… or until the next light.

You "win"
You held strong, you didn't concede. The other driver had to jump on the brakes and even managed to honk and give you the finger in the process. But it doesn't matter: you "won" the fight. You are in front. You didn't let that guy stole your well-deserved first place. You are a winner! The Winner!

But now is not the time to celebrate just yet: it's not over. You may have "won", but you now have an "enemy" right behind you. An enemy that is pissed at you for losing. An enemy that won't forget. An enemy that will get his revenge as soon as he can. You have to stay focused because the next light is coming close and it's two lanes again!
You both "lose"
There is a third outcome that we didn't mention. One whose odds are surprisingly underestimated.
As the road tightened, none of you conceded. You crashed into each other, rather violently and hit a pedestrian in the process. Your day is not getting better… that is, if you are still alive.

People tend to forget way too often the likeliness of this outcome, or at least love diminishing the probability and consequences of it happening.
The human nature
Let's take a moment and analyse what happened here.
Somebody "threatened" you. Somebody wanted to force you to do something that you didn't want to do — go second — so what did you do instead?
You resisted.
Resisting is human nature. From the youngest age we learn the value in being the strongest, in winning. When someone pushes us, we push back. We always hold strong, or at least we try to.

This works perfectly well when we are indeed the strongest; when our physical — or mental — abilities are superior to the ones of our opponent(s). But our opponents aren't always tangible.
Let me be clear: I'm not only talking about physical confrontation here, but about any kind of threat or conflict. It goes from an argument with a coworker to an unexpected change in your environment, an injustice in your life or a difference of opinion. All of these events can cause you to resist the situation. To use your strength to force things your way.
It's all natural because it reassures us in our own choices to see other people make the same decisions, have the same opinions.
So what's so wrong with resisting?
At this point you may wonder what could be so wrong about resisting. Everybody does it, so it can't be all bad.
If you feel like you need to resist, do it. You may be right. It's an interesting way of seeing things.
By the way, I don't really mean the previous sentence, but that was me not resisting. You couldn't tell? Awesome. That's the whole point. But more on this in the last section.
Resisting is exhausting
Have you ever seen an arm-wrestling competition? Those guys — and girls — are resisting a lot, and on purpose.
They all train a long time to gain physical strength. It's physics, the one with the more arm/shoulder/hip power wins. Except… it's not that simple.

Arm-wrestling is about more than just physical strength, it's also about competing at the mental level. At similar strength, the one with the most will, the one that lets go last wins. They are not only resisting with their arms, but also with their minds.
And guess what? This is exhausting. Resisting is exhausting. You would think that the physical part is the hardest one, but it actually isn't.
Physical resistance is easy: it's just applied physics. The biggest arm, the fastest car wins. And it's easy to evaluate one's physical superiority to a relatively good level of confidence. This means you can pick fights that you have a higher chance of winning because of your known superior physical resistance.
Mental resistance on the other hand is incredibly hard: you cannot easily guess how confident, how mentally strong one is before completing a fight. But that's not even the worse thing: in most cases, mental resistance is tough because you fight an enemy that knows you better than anyone else: that's you.

When you resist to a change in your life, there is no-one else to compete with you. Just you and your refusal to accept the situation.
Think again at the first example: once you "lost" the car race and your are in the back, there is no more any physical resistance in play. But you are still angry. You still want to "win" even though that ship has sailed. This is you resisting at the situation, and the sad news is… you can only lose because you are now competing against yourself.
Kung-Fu to the rescue
A couple of years ago, I started taking Kung-Fu lessons. Not the impressive kind you see in the movies where the actors jump and throw spikes while dodging inflamed shurikens, no. Classic, ancient Kung-Fu lessons in a traditional Chinese school.
The teacher there — we call him Sifu — could actually come straight from a movie. An old and small Chinese man who you can tell english isn't his first language — by the way, it isn't mine either so I'm really not judging. This guy doesn't have much physical strength compared to someone in his 30’s like me. He must weight about a third of me. If you come across him in the street, it would probably look as if you could make him fall by a simple push of the hand if you tried.
That would be a terrible, terrible mistake.
The first time I had to attack him — at his request — to demonstrate something, it felt weird. I was ordered to try and punch that old man with all of my strength. I knew he couldn't block it — our muscular differences and physics had made that very clear — and… he didn't. No, he didn't block it… but he didn't get punched either.

He barely moved but still, my punch was off his face by less than an inch. Not much, but enough for me to achieve exactly nothing. His punch though, was stopped really close to my nose in a way that was saying: "I could have not stopped had I wanted to."
I was instructed to continue to try and hit him, anywhere I wanted. My shots didn't land anywhere useful. The more strength and speed I would put into those, the more off the mark I was. The worst thing is I couldn't feel a thing. He wasn't blocking me. Yet I wasn't doing any kind of "damage". It was as-if my own strength was playing against me.
After a dozen of failed attempts we stopped, laughing at my misery and I asked, like many before me: "How is that possible, Sifu?"
The answer, in three words, was astonishing of simplicity:
Never resist. Redirect.
There you have it. The little sentence that changed my life.
This particular style of Kung-Fu teaches us to never use our force to block an opponent. Blocking/resisting is the poor man's solution to a problem: you don't have to think, you just block. But as we've seen, this is exhausting when it works… and fatal when it doesn't.
The rationale is that your opponent will likely be stronger than you and so resisting just can’t work. This makes sense because most people are cowards.
What do you think is more likely? Getting attacked by a small, old grandmother with a walker or getting mugged by a group of young men in their 20’s at the top of their physical conditions?

Let's be honest, this is not an easy habit to get rid of. After all, it is in our human nature to resist. You don't change what you have been doing for years in the blink of an eye. But with continued practice, you can change your habits, slowly and surely…
But the real beauty of it comes when you realize that this little piece of wisdom doesn't apply only for physical resistance: it works for mental resistance as well. But how?
My not-so-secret-anymore strategy
I feel I have to be very explicit about one thing: not resisting does not mean letting yourself be beat up, rolled over, passed by, or whatever degrading thing you might think of. No.
Not resisting means just that: don't resist. It certainly does not mean "do not defend yourself" in case the Kung-Fu story didn't make that clear.
But how do you defend against non-physical aggressions? How do you "redirect" those?
I believe the key is to let go of the small battles and to focus on winning the war instead.
Have you ever been in a meeting where you have this very vocal person that has a very strong opinion on a topic and who you know is wrong? As always, we have a natural tendency to correct people that are wrong. We want to resist them imposing their incorrect vision of the world onto us. As soon as they speak their lies, we interrupt them to fix the truth. And as they do the same, people start yelling. Soon the meeting goes sour and it's likely no-one will get anything meaningful out of it.
I used to do that a lot. I don't anymore.

Whenever someone says something that I know is wrong, I let them talk. When they are done, I merely repeat the last sentence they said in the form of a question: "So, you think that we should … am I getting that right? That's interesting." I do that several times, until the person in front of me has nothing new to add. I don't say I agree. I say that it is interesting, regardless of whether it really is interesting.
This serves many purposes:
- It appeases tensions. People love being heard. By acknowledging what they just said in form of a question, I prove my — genuine or fake, it doesn't matter — interest to what they have to say. This has a long term effect, not just for the duration of the meeting.
- Because of 1. and the principle of reciprocity, it is now much, MUCH, harder for someone at least a little socially apt to forbid me the right to talk. I listened to them with the best of my attention, so they feel in debt to me and have to listen back. They may try and interrupt me again, but usually someone comes to my defence: "You already spoke a lot, let him express his point of view."
- I am now speaking last and my opponents have nothing new to add. Why do you think the prosecution speaks last at a trial?
- I have plenty of time to think about my strategy, at my next arguments, at the flaws in theirs… And sometimes I realize I am wrong and it gives me time to adapt my exit strategy. After all there is nothing wrong in being wrong, as long as you can admit it.
- It makes me look like the reasonable guy. The guy that is patient and never loses its temper. Who do you think looks more reliable and trustworthy?
I metaphorically let them punch me with their ideas only to subtly deflect their attempts at the last moment, when they are all-in and can't pull back. That's when I counter: when I am in the best position, with all the knowledge.
This obviously also work outside of meetings. For instance what if a coworker comes at you while you are super busy with something like:
"Why aren't you using X instead of Y?! X is so much better!"
Between the two following strategies, what do you think will get you out of the argument and back to your really important work faster?
A. "Are you crazy? X is shit! Y has …, … and …!"
Or:
B. "Oh thanks for the advice! I'll definitely have a look later on."
Needless to say, you don't really have to have a look later. Yes, that's a lie, but it's a lie for a good cause: your coworker feels listened and you saved useless debating time on a topic that basically comes down to personal preferences anyway.
Obviously, this means you have to give up trying to convince him to use Y too, but why would you want to force him to do so? What is there really in for you?
One day at a time…
My advice would be to remain confident enough of what you know, but stay opened to the idea of being wrong.
As I like to say:
"If someone cares about you enough to try and convince you you are mistaken, the least you can do is listen."
I started to apply this strategy a bit more than a year ago. Ever since I have found myself in much less conflicting situations. Not only at work but in my everyday life too.
Whether it's the racist relative at a family diner, or a rude customer yelling at me, not resisting has helped me going through those situations without feeling bitter or losing my calm. I learnt how to accept differences of opinion, and how to stop trying to convince everyone just to reassure myself in my own choices. I learnt how to win arguments easily by taking the path of least resistance.
But more importantly, I stopped constantly losing fights against my worse enemy… I stopped losing fights against myself.