Do you ever resist doing things you know are good for you or that you KNOW you’d like if you just tried it?

For some reason it is my human nature to resist new ideas and new things even if I know they’d be good for me to do.  I hope I am not the only one.  If you have or ARE doing these things, then consider this your PERMISSION to feel GOOD about yourself today. Go YOU!

The rest of us, why do we resist things that we know will make us happy in the end?  As I think back on my life there are been very few things like this that haven’t enriched my life greatly.

My goal in writing this post is to convince myself as much or more than anyone to spend LESS time resisting things I know would be good and spend MORE time enjoying and exploring new and better avenues in our lives. (I actually DO struggle with this, that’s why I need a list to tell me what to do.)

I’ll share a few things I’ve spent a lot of time resisting, but turned out to be the best and most influential parts of my life.

I am a religious person.  I believe in God and believe I have a communicative relationship with him.  When I was 20 years old I felt I had a calling from God to dedicate myself to full-time missionary service. This was not something I wanted or that I had planned.  I was a full-time employee and student.  Honestly, my biggest fear was that I would miss out on FUN with friends and family while I was away.

I resisted this calling for three years before giving in to the spiritual promptings and accepted a call from my church leaders to provide missionary service in Upstate New York.  It was a tremendously difficult job that yielded tremendous spiritual benefits I now rely on and have built my life around.  There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t fondly reflect on my days in New York.

Another instance was the inner battle I went through before I joined Weight Watchers.  I knew that I should join, but I resisted because it cost money, it was embarrassing to admit that I needed help, and I was AFRAID I would fail and then have no options.

After several years, I finally joined. I’ll never forget the RELIEF I felt after my first session at Weight Watchers.  The program made sense to me and I knew could live with it for a long time. That day, I almost felt like I had already lost all the weight I had been carrying around physically and mentally.  I knew I was on the road to recovery. My only regret is that I resisted the idea for so many years. Over the next five years I (slowly) progressed down the road to better health and a better body.  In all, I lost 65 pounds.

These were GIANT examples about ways I’ve resisted my own happiness, but there are small things that we resist that can bring daily joy and satisfaction. It might be something like exercise, or meal planning, personal prayer, housekeeping, doing something fun, or providing an act of compassionate service to another person.  I hope this post will bring to the forefront of your mind the things you know you WANT or know you SHOULD be doing for your own sake.  I hope it inspires you to take some kind of action that will make you happy today and in the future.