From the author: Have you ever met people who say that they are not happy with some situation in their life, but do not change anything? And the people who state their problem, but as soon as you try to help them solve it, find a bunch of excuses or simply “evaporate”? Perhaps there are such situations in your life too? The notorious promises to start a new life on Monday, never swear again, stop eating all kinds of crap, etc. Why is it that when you make a promise to yourself to start doing something in a new way, somewhere very deep down you immediately feel the desire to break it? The feeling is as if there are two people in you at once: one who declares something and the second is a saboteur who wants to thwart the plans of the first at any cost. Why don't you keep your promises to yourself and continue to live a life that doesn't suit you? You can usually call it laziness, but probably the roots of this phenomenon are deeper. I suggest you take a closer look. So, a saboteur has settled inside you and is resisting your intention to change the situation. What forms does this resistance take? You know exactly what you don’t want, but you don’t know or don’t think about what you want instead. This habit is formed from childhood with the frequent use by parents of the words “you can’t”, “do as I do” and gestures that confirm them. They decide for the child what is suitable for him and what is not, replacing current ideas with their own ideas. It turns out a funny situation: - Give me a ticket from Moscow. - Where? - Well, I say, from Moscow. There is only one option here - to train the ability to clearly formulate the destination. If you sincerely believe that in order to change the situation, it is necessary for another to change ( your partner, husband, child, girlfriend, etc.) In reality, we cannot change another person unless he decides to do so. And the only thing we can change is ourselves. As long as you shift responsibility for the situation to your partner, it is unsolvable. In such cases, I recommend looking deeper into yourself and seeing why you want to change this in another person. Usually what we need to change in ourselves, we try to change in someone else. If someone tells you something you need to change in your behavior and you feel angry. In this situation, anger indicates that you have “stepped on a sore spot.” And it’s worth seriously thinking about this person’s advice (perhaps discarding the form in which it was given). Try, putting aside your anger, to find out the specifics of what exactly needs to be changed and how best to do it. And then you can decide for yourself whether to do it or not. In behavior, resistance is expressed in running away from the situation: in changing the topic of conversation, in the desire to leave the room, go to the toilet, be late, get sick, look to the side or out the window, yawn , in refusal to pay attention to anything, in the desire to eat, smoke, drink, end relationships, etc. If you notice such reactions in yourself, stop and ask yourself: what am I running from now? What am I afraid of? Often resistance connects our beliefs and ideas about the world to use them as excuses. For example, this can be expressed in the following phrases: it won’t suit me, men (women) shouldn’t do this, it’s not accepted in my family, I’m not like that, it’s too far to travel, it’s too expensive, it will take a lot of time, I’m into it I don’t believe it, the moment is not right, I’m not ready. I won’t succeed. What will people say? And the list can go on indefinitely. The following reasons are most often behind this kind of excuse: Fear of the unknown. It’s bad now, but everything is known and already familiar. It is unclear how the situation will change. What if it gets worse? And, again, I don’t want to change the awl for soap. Thinking through more detail about what exactly you need to do, what the risks are, what you will do if the risk materializes, etc. can help as a means of reducing anxiety. Those..