eorge Costanza, a character from the T.V. series Seinfeld, made this practice famous when he declared out loud that “nothing in his life has ever worked as planned. Every instinct he’s ever had has been wrong. So from now on, he was going to do the opposite.” And when he did, starting with the typical lunch he had, everything in his life began to work miraculously! He was kind and polite when he wanted to blow up, and he blew up when he tried to shirk away. He practiced restraint when he would want to act, and acted when he would typically restrain. He spoke his mind when he would generally please and was pleasing when he would habitually give others a piece of his mind!

So let’s take a look at why this actually makes sense as a legitimate practice.

Following on the premise that the voices in our heads talk us into doing what is unhelpful and talk us out of doing what is helpful, it would seem that practicing doing the opposite has the potential to foil the voices and ultimately free us.

Because of our Karmic conditioning, we have predisposed survival strategies in place to keep risk, danger, discomfort, unpleasantness, and change from happening to us. This strategy is why certain groups of people will avoid going out and prefer to be alone (called introverts), and other groups of people will avoid being alone with themselves in preference to being out with others all the time (called extroverts).

Both strategies have benefits and liabilities. And neither approach, I would argue, really applies to either group exclusively since there are times when introverts are extroverts and times when extroverts are introverts. It’s just that certain parts of us have gotten more airtime and support than others, so they feel like they’re “really us” most of the time.

At the Zen monastery, we knew this was true on many levels. When new monks showed up, we wouldn’t ask those monks what they were good at or what skills they could offer the monastery. They would be tossed out to face the voices in their heads shrieking while doing an unfamiliar task. They would be shown, step-by-step, the exact process required to do that task. And they would follow the instructions precisely with a beginner’s mind.

Did terror arise? Certainly! As did the excitement of unknown adventures!

You’ve noticed this too. Because no matter how hard we may try to avoid it, change does happen.

Whenever I’ve moved to a new location, I’d watch as my wide-eyed enthusiasm would begin to build. I’d be discovering new walking paths, new groups of people to meet, unique shops to visit, and new opportunities to face. But over the coming days, weeks and months those paths would become well worn. The people became cliques, the shops became the same, and I didn’t see much available to me outside of what I was currently doing.

There’s science to prove that we, as creatures, have parts of our brains that prefer autopilot. These are the parts that corner us into the status quo. While we may say that we want something different, we are enforced to stay the same. To this part of the brain it’s a matter of life and death — even though there’s sometimes evidence that if we don’t change, it will equal REAL death. Not just the illusory “feeling of death.”

At the monastery, it was simple. We either said “yes” to what we were asked to do or we said “goodbye.” My teacher told us that her Roshi promised her when she was finally admitted into the monastery where she trained, that he would find everything she disliked and “push her nose into it.”

That’s because I was at the monastery, just like my teacher was at her monastery, to face down the voices and free myself from the limitations that enslaved me. To see what life was like outside of what I preferred, what I liked, what I wanted, what I felt comfortable with, and what I believed was true about me.

Out in the world, it was easy to abandon myself. If I became uncomfortable with someone or a situation I was in, I could leave. Instead of learning something, I could ask my buddy who was good at it to do it for me. Instead of facing my fears, I could avoid them.

So even today, when I’m working with my clients, I know that resistance is a good sign. It means that they’re going up against change. They’re surprised at my excitement, mostly because they’re interpreting the resistance as a bad sign. But again, remember THE OPPOSITE.

Resistance only means that they’re on the path to more growth. It’s not supposed to be easy.

Nothing significant for us ever has been.