Strength training is my preferred form of exercise (when I'm not choosing to be lazy and undisciplined). When I am working hard, a moment occurs when there are two or three reps left on the last set. My muscles start to burn, the weight stops moving, and I begin to think "That's probably enough. I could stop here". That's the moment where building strength actually starts.

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If you stop at that point, the best possible outcome is maintaining current strength. To grow stronger, you have to keep moving the weight. You have to battle both the physical reality of ATP depletion and the falsehoods of the lazy, comfort-seeking part of your mind.  If you push the discomfort away and intensify your focus, the weight starts moving again (most of the time). You finish your plan for the day (you did go in with a plan, right?). You go home tired, but satisfied. You eat. You sleep. You come back to the gym, and what was hard becomes easier. You get stronger, not despite the the resistance, but because of it.

The same principle applies in our social interactions, but most of us fail to appreciate it. At work, you develop an idea or a plan. It's such an obvious improvement on the current situation that only a complete bozo could fail to see the wisdom in it. You present the idea to the boss or to a committee. They shoot it down. What a bunch of bozos. They're either dense or they're looking out for their own interests instead of what's best for the company. You've reached that moment again. The moment where strength is failing, muscles are shaking, and the weight isn't moving. Your lazy, comfort-seeking mind tells you you've done what you could, and it's time to give up on this initiative.

The resistance is telling you to get stronger. Can you get the weight moving again?

Maybe your boss isn't a bozo. Maybe those people from the other department aren't just playing a political game. Maybe your idea is weak. Maybe the idea was fine, but the presentation was weak. Maybe the idea and the presentation were both good, but your relationships with the people who make the decisions is weak. Without the resistance, the weakness would remain.

Maybe all of the things you imagined ARE true. Maybe your bozo of a boss and the politicians from the other department are on a mission to stifle you. It's a far rarer situation than our lazy, comfort-seeking mind would tempt you to believe, but it happens. The message is the same. Whether the resistance comes from people who are on your side, who want you to take something that merely has potential and sharpen it to perfection or from people who want nothing more than to see you fail, it carries the same message: you must grow stronger.

Almost two millennia ago, the Roman Emperor and amateur Stoic philosopher wrote this:

In a sense, people are our proper occupation. Our job is to do them good and put up with them. But when they obstruct our proper tasks, they become irrelevant to us—like sun, wind, animals. Our actions may be impeded by them, but there can be no impeding our intentions or our dispositions. Because we can accommodate and adapt. The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting. The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way. [Marcus Aurelius -- Meditations, 20]

Be thankful for the resistance. Are you ready to hear what it's telling you?

Some of my thoughts on this were inspired by what I consider to be one of the best essays ever written, Iron and the Soul, by Henry Rollins. Do yourself a service and read it.