It is like a the rational part of you that is aware of the negative consequences is fighting over the apparently irrational part of you that would rather settle for less and just enjoy the cheap immediate pleasure that is going to slowly destroy your life.
This fight is hardly ever wined by anybody, because we have very little control over our bodies, if you are going to fight you will get your ass kicked over and over again, it is an unwinnable fight. There are some people that have stamina they can last in the ring for a very long time but they are far from winning.
The only wise thing to do with fights that you can't win is to don't even fight in the first place but then you are trapped between the self sabotage that is happening on a daily bases and your bodies instincts that are waiting for you to just try to go against them like a bully waiting to kick your ass.
This creates an interesting dilemma if you try you are very likely to fail if you don't it will just get worst. For decades self-help groups and various spiritual teaching told people to don stop resisting. Like for example the first step of AA is to admit that you have a problem, or it is quite a common theme in Buddhism to be present and learn to allow everything. Which is a rather strange thing to do because if you are trying to change yourself it is very contraintuitive to work on accepting what are you trying to change or go to meetings where they just talk about your problems rather than taking direct action. This creates the impression of passivity and indulgence rather then a very motivated group of people ready to squeeze the most juice out of life.
I am not a very spiritual and i don't like self-help gurus, it would be easy to dismiss everything but maybe there is a seed of truth in this, we don't want to throw away the baby with the bath water after all.
We have very little control over ourselves this is why it is important to accept the things that you can't control. Yet at the same time it doesn't mean that you need to be passive, acceptance is about the things that you can't change while resistance is about what you can change.
Things you can't control
Emotions
Your emotional system is part of the autonomic nervous system, which is wired to react to involuntary not your own will.
Actions
Your actions are dependent on your emotions, the human brain is wired to seek pleasure and avoid pain, and this will trigger emotions that influences the way you behave for example when you are afraid you fight or flee.
Breath
In a lot of spiritual practice breath is introduced as the catalyst with which with practice you will gain control over certain factors like emotions or thoughts. This is of course false because you have no control over emotions and other things.
Thoughts
Thoughts are often used in self help as a tool of control from making you happy in the present true positive affirmations or the law of attraction, which state that your thoughts create reality through thinking. Neither of thouse facts are empirically proven. First of all you have a very limited control over your thoughts, for example you can think right know of a house if you want but let's say you are unhappy trying to think positive thoughts won't do you much good, you will fail and lose self esteem because you are trying to respond to something you don't have control over.
Perception
Your perception is also something you don't have control over because it is highly influenced by your emotions. There is something called reticular activating system that filter the information that is being picked by your senses from the environment. Like for example whenever you buy some new piece of clothing and you think that you haven't saw anybody wear it and after you buy it you see a lot of people wearing the same item. It is not like all boot the same item at the same time with you or they decided to wear it in the same day, it was there all the time it was just irrelevant for you before you boot it. You probably saw it but your brain just didn't gave any importance to that information. Consciously choosing on what to hold your attention or perception can be done only for very short periods of time, not a powerful enough tool to create any change in your life.
Other people
Just a quick search on Amazon for self development books and you can see the volume of books focused on controlling and manipulating others. The problem with that is that human are design by nature to be free we all have a need for autonomy, you simply can`t tell people what to do and expect them to do it. You have to manipulate them to do it which often doesn't work and even if it does there are way too many negative side effects long term like resentment or rebellion. Think of all the parents trying to control their children this is why majority of us experienced a period of rebellion as teenagers, and often the manipulations techniques just failed.
External factors
This should be obvious enough, but unfortunately from what i am seeing in the world not so obvious. Controlling external things like weather or traffic it is impossible, there are simply too many variable factors impossible to anticipate. Because of all the variable trying to control all this is simply delusional.
Skills and abilities
Your skills and abilities will vary from day to day and other factors like for example how often you practice, or with who you practice, your level of energy. There are simply too many variable to expect a very consistent performance level and expecting that can be very demoralizing especially because you have to put so much time and energy into it, which can cause people to quit when they see inconsistent results.
Body language
Body language is often presented in self help books as a tool of developing confidence on the premise fake it until you make it. Your body language will reflect your emotions to the outside world, you have very limited control over it i don't think you can fake a confident body language more then you can hold your breath. There is some scientific research out there that indicates some hormonal changes inside the body through certain postures though this changes are minor and non semnificative body language it is not an effective tool through which you can generate change or improve the quality of your life. I found in the past whenever i would try to control my body language that it would make my emotions worst because it would make me resist them. The purpose of your body language is to communicate to the outside world how you feel and you have no control over it.
Surrender
In some spiritual practices people talk often of surrender or maybe you heard of being present. This will only give people the wrong sense of responsibility because surrender is highly dependent on the environment. Surrender happens automatically when you realize that you can't avoid a conflict and have no chance of winning.
Gratitude
Gratitude is another thing often mentioned in spiritual practices, it is presented as a way to keep you happy basically if you are in a state of gratitude you can't feel any negative emotions and i agree you can only experience one emotion at the time. The problem with this is that gratitude happen with a purpose is to reward you whenever you are happy where you are in life you can`t decide when to feel it and when not to. Sure at any point in life you have something to be grateful about but if you are faced with emotional distress your brain will automatically focus on the problem in order to solve it, to focus on gratitude during those moment doesn't help in solving your problems, and is also impossible because in order to focus on gratitude you have to change your perception over which you have very limited control.
Outcome
We often enter in some situation in our lives, and because we are trying to avoid the negative consequences of failure, we deny the probability of failure. This creates a lot of anxiety in the moment because anxiety is a warning mechanism. As soon as you acknowledge all the possible things that could happen to you in any given moment, especially the negative ones, and recognise the fact that you have no control over the outcome. This tends to relief a lot of the anxiety.
Just because you temporarily accepted your emotions, thoughts etc. it dosen't mean that you can't resist your situation.
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