What You Resist Persists

"Focus on what you desire to have more of in your life, since your focus brings you more of whatever you put your attention on, and what you resist, persists."

There's a common ScienceFiction scenario where the Aliens have a tractor beam on the spaceship containing our heros. Our heros, by reflex, shift into reverse and throttle up to try to get away. Then they discover the harder they pull the stronger the tractor beam gets. The aliens are either pulling power directly from the hero's engines, or feeding the spaceship's kinetic energy into their own systems.

WYRP happens when negative energy you feed into a system causes feedback that makes it stronger. For example, if you scream every day at teenagers not to have sex, use drugs, or get pierced, try to guess what they are going to run out and do.

The best way to prevent teenage sex is using morphing software to show what their children will look like. One look and they obstain, or use ultra-thick contraceptives.

One of my favorite stories is about a Native American grandfather talking to his young grandson.

He tells the boy he has two wolves inside of him struggling with each other. The first is the wolf of peace, love and kindness. The other wolf is fear, greed and hatred. "

Which wolf will win, grandfather?" asks the young boy.

"Whichever one I feed," is the reply.

--Laura Nithsdale

A.k.a. "Systems push back."

: Cf. PietHein's famous couplet: Problems worthy of attack / prove their worth by hitting back.

Discussion moved to WhatYouResistPersistsDiscussion.

Oh, OK. But I had for a long time thought that this WikiName referred to the idea that if someone makes a change, and you change it back, then as well as restoring the status quo you send a message about how you think things should be... what is that called, then?

See HowardStern, YouCantPushaPieceOfString, AesopsFables?