Introduction
You often wonder why you choose habits that leave you exhausted and unfulfilled. This invisible force of self-sabotage holds you back from the life you genuinely desire. Matthew Kelly calls this force Resistance, and it actively works against your spiritual and personal growth every single day.
Resisting Happiness argues that true joy comes only from spiritual alignment and deep self-discipline. You cannot find lasting peace by chasing temporary pleasures or avoiding hard choices. Instead, you must develop daily habits that strengthen your soul and align your actions with your ultimate purpose.
The book guides you through a clear process of transformation. You will first examine how Resistance operates in your life. You will then explore essential spiritual practices, build practical self-control, and finally discover your unique mission.
- What triggers your daily acts of self-sabotage?
- How can you build sustainable spiritual habits?
- What is the true source of lasting happiness?
1. Resistance and the Quest for Happiness
Resistance is the universal enemy that manifests as laziness and self-sabotage, preventing people from finding true joy.
Resistance acts as a sluggish feeling of not wanting to do good things and an inclination to do harmful things. It wears a thousand masks such as fear, doubt, and instant gratification, and must be slain anew each day. Matthew Kelly notes that even after writing twenty books that sold millions of copies, he still has to battle and slay resistance just to sit down and write.
Ninety-five percent of aspiring authors who talk about publishing before finishing their manuscript are never heard from again due to resistance.
You can uncover patterns of resistance by using this exercise:
- Write down every time you encounter resistance for a week.
Your Quest for Happiness
People constantly sabotage their own happiness through destructive behaviors and misdirected pursuits because they misunderstand what truly brings lasting joy. Humans possess an insatiable desire for happiness, yet they often mistakenly believe that pleasure, possessions, or status will satisfy it. Destroyers of happiness include worry, unhealthy comparisons, debt, gossip, laziness, and negativity.
The author shares that working hard, taking a morning walk, and starting the day with prayer form a bulletproof recipe for a great day, yet he constantly faces resistance against doing them.
Three months is the timeframe suggested to evaluate your overall happiness score.
You can measure your current state and habits by using these steps:
- Give yourself a happiness score between one and ten over the past three months.
- Identify three activities that increase your happiness and write them down.
Making Sense of Everything
Nothing on earth can satisfy the human desire for happiness because people are created by God and for God with an inner void that only He can fill. People mistakenly try to fill the spiritual void with toys, wealth, pleasure, or achievements. Placing anything other than God at the center of life leads to a disorienting, gnawing dissatisfaction.
The author overheard his six-year-old son Walter say he was more interested in chocolate eggs and chocolate bunnies than Jesus during Easter.
Resisting happiness ultimately means resisting God, who desires human happiness and heaven even more than individuals want it for themselves. Just as a coach must avoid wanting success for a participant more than the participant does, God respects human free will while deeply desiring to empower people for their unique mission. The author uses the example of corporate and life coaching practices to explain that true empowerment cannot happen if someone else wants the outcome more than the person doing the work.
At age fifteen, the author had good grades, excelled at sports, had a wonderful girlfriend, and ran successful businesses, yet he experienced a deep restlessness that made him realize there must be more to life. Fifteen years old was the age when the author experienced an intense realization that something was missing. A persistent sense of dissatisfaction and restlessness is a signal from God that something is missing and should be listened to rather than ignored. Ignoring inner discontent and pretending everything is fine leads to growing anxiety and spiritual illness. Restlessness should be acknowledged and used to drive positive change.
Life is inherently messy, and everyone encountered every day is fighting a hard battle behind a facade of normalcy. People carry immense hidden burdens such as terminal illness, abuse, financial ruin, and family heartbreak. Rather than avoiding the mess, individuals are called to offer mercy and make a small difference. The author was profoundly changed after being diagnosed with cancer and realizing that everyone around him on the street was going about their day unaware of the internal turmoil he faced.
2. Spiritual Health and Daily Habits
Spiritual health requires deliberate cultivation through daily prayer, scripture reading, and continuous learning.
Just as physical health requires attention, the interior life dictates the overflow of the exterior life. Establishing daily prayer habits allows individuals to discern who they are, what they are here for, and what matters most. Billions are spent on physical health, but spiritual health is rarely discussed. This neglect leads to locked church doors when people desperately need a quiet place to pray at night.
Guided by his mentor John, the author started stopping by his school chapel for ten minutes a day to plan his day and talk to God, which became the turning point of his spiritual conversion. Twenty years is the duration the author has spent encouraging people to set aside ten minutes a day for quiet prayer.
Take ten minutes sometime today to sit with God in silence. Present to him the biggest question you are struggling with and ask, "God, what do you think I should do?"
The Big Question
The four words "Thy will be done" embody the ultimate challenge of the Christian life, shifting focus from worldly desires to divine alignment. A person's reaction to these words depends entirely on their image of God. Viewing God as a loving father fosters surrender, whereas a distorted view leads to arrogance and a lukewarm spiritual life.
Reflect on your image of God by writing down the qualities that make up the way you see Him and tracing each back to its roots.
God is found in the ordinary and present moments of daily life rather than in the extraordinary. People often seek God in extraordinary events, but His favorite place is amid the ordinary things. Cultivating present-moment awareness allows us to experience God as life happens rather than only in hindsight.
Dynamic Catholic looked for three specific qualities in team members: committed, coachable, and aware. A year of discussions was the time spent working out what the ideal team member looked like.
- Learn to find God in the ordinary activities of daily life.
- At the end of the day, write down three times when you were fully aware of God in your day.
Universal Call to Holiness
The universal call to holiness is an ongoing journey of personal conversion to become the-best-version-of-yourself. Holiness is not about comparing yourself to other people, but about comparing your self of today to your former self. Every moment and choice is an opportunity to grow and align with God's path.
The author experienced his Pentecost Moment upon discovering the universal call to holiness, realizing there is a direct connection between happiness and holiness. Thinking about death rearranges our priorities and provides remarkable clarity on what truly matters in life. Hospice nurses shared twenty-four regrets of dying people, such as wishing they had been themselves, spent more time with loved ones, and realized happiness is a choice.
- In each moment of each day choose the-very-best-version-of-yourself.
- Ask yourself, is what I am about to do going to help me become the-best-version-of-myself?
The primary purpose of work is to help us grow in virtue and become the-best-version-of-yourself, and every activity can be transformed into prayer. Making money is a secondary outcome of work, but hard work builds virtues like patience, diligence, perseverance, and integrity. By offering our work and daily tasks to God as a prayer for specific intentions, we bring immense value to mundane activities.
John taught the author to write the initials of someone at the top of each page in his textbook and offer that page of study as a prayer for that person. Genesis 2:15 describes being put in the Garden of Eden to work on the land, and 1 Thessalonians 5:17 commands believers to pray without ceasing.
- Offer each hour or activity of your day to God as a prayer for a specific intention.
- Set an alarm to go off each hour.
- Take a deep breath and lift the coming hour up to God.
People who regularly read the Bible make better decisions and align their minds with the mind of God. Reading scripture gives incredible insight into God's mind and helps counteract the cynicism and negativity of culture. Scheduling important non-urgent activities like Bible reading ensures they actually happen.
A Fortune 500 CEO scheduled Bible reading at seven o'clock every morning for seven years after becoming senior vice president of sales during a recession.
- Set aside a few minutes each day to read and reflect on a passage from the Bible, beginning with Matthew, Proverbs, or Psalms.
Continuous learning and excellence go hand in hand, and falling in love with learning transforms your life forever. Wherever you find excellence, you find continuous learning, whereas a lack of it leads to mediocrity. Great books and spiritual classics focus our minds, inspire our hearts, and help us maintain positive thinking rooted in hope.
The author made four New Year's resolutions: pray every day, exercise every day, read every day, and write every day. At the time of making resolutions, the author had four children six years old and under, and maintained a personal collection of thirty-seven books in his Great Books collection.
- Do something today to stoke your love of learning.
Learning to embrace solitude and serving the lonely breaks through personal resistance and brings deep satisfaction. Resistance often blocks us from taking good steps forward, such as visiting lonely people or embracing solitude. Experiencing solitude and confronting loneliness teaches us gratitude, self-knowledge, and the ability to make a difference.
John took the young author to a nursing home to visit elderly residents who had few visitors and ask them for advice. The visits lasted two hours each Saturday afternoon, while the author spent more than 250 days each year traveling in his twenties, marked by twenty-five years of people welcoming him on his travels.
- Visit the lonely somewhere not too far from where you live.
3. Spiritual Discipline and Self-Control
Breaking cycles of self-sabotage requires combining prayer with fasting, active listening, and delaying gratification.
Resistance naturally leverages negative patterns and bad habits like procrastination, worry, and overeating. While negative habits form easily, positive habits require deliberate cultivation and act as ground won forever that protects you from daily fatigue and temptation. You can evaluate your daily routines by identifying your strengths and weaknesses.
- Write down your three best habits.
- Write down three habits that you need to change.
Transforming the Mass Experience
Catholics often attend Mass passively, expecting entertainment or comfort rather than engaging proactively. Bringing a small pocket-size notebook to Mass and writing down one personalized insight transforms a passive experience into an active dialogue with God. Matthew Kelly has kept a Mass Journal for nineteen years and uses past journals to track his personal growth and recurring spiritual struggles, referencing entries from 2005 and 2016.
- Get a small pocket-size notebook to serve as your Mass Journal.
- Bring it with you to Mass next Sunday.
- Greet God as you walk into church and ask: God, show me one way in this Mass I can become a-better-version-of-myself this week.
- Listen to the music, readings, preaching, prayers, and the quiet of your heart.
- Write down just one thought, idea, challenge, or invitation that jumps out at you on its own page and date it.
- Spend the rest of Mass praying about how to live out that one idea in the coming week.
Boredom is a manifestation of selfishness that happens when individuals set God and neighbor aside to focus exclusively on themselves. If growing numbers of people find the central experience of Catholicism boring, the church will be reduced to a small cultural curiosity. Matthew Kelly and his brothers used to hold an election every Sunday morning to try to convince their father they did not have to go to church, only to be met with their father's challenge to name a more important way to spend their time.
- If you are ever bored, look for a way to get outside yourself and serve others.
The Power of Habits
Human beings experience a universal, complex hunger that ultimately reflects a deep yearning for God. Ernest Hemingway described walking past a restaurant in Paris with his wife Hadley, splurging on a feast, and later realizing while lying in the dark that his hunger was still unsatisfied, thirty years before writing his memoir A Moveable Feast. Breaking cycles of self-sabotage, addiction, and inner slavery requires combining prayer with the discipline of fasting from small things.
- Start giving up little things each day, such as choosing water instead of a Coke or taking the long way instead of a shortcut.
- Accompany every tiny sacrifice with a short prayer, such as offering it for a specific intention like a friend struggling with cancer.
- Pray and fast, asking God to liberate you from areas of slavery in your life.
The ability to delay gratification is an essential spiritual discipline and a practical skill intimately linked with long-term success. Studies from the Stanford marshmallow experiment conducted in the 1960s and 1970s showed that children who could wait the 15-minute period for rewards achieved better educational attainment and life well-being. A businessman named Mike turned forty, fell out of shape, and joined a rigorous 6:30 a.m. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday get-fit program led by a retired army sergeant who rebuked Mike's mental weakness when he asked to sit out the 90-minute class attended by 200 entrepreneurs and business owners in Washington, D.C.
- Say no to yourself at least once every day.
4. Mission, Surrender, and Purpose
Fulfilling your divine mission requires total availability to God, regular confession, and unwavering persistence against critics.
Human beings are temporary residents on earth and must approach life as pilgrims seeking meaning rather than tourists demanding immediate comfort. Tourists rush around and get upset by delays, while pilgrims count their blessings and accept delays as messages.
The author and Father Bob Sherry host three annual pilgrimages to locations such as the Holy Land, Lourdes, Paris, Rome, Assisi, and Florence.
Regular confession acts like a spiritual car wash. It restores sensitivity to sin and prevents small moral compromises from compounding into major self-destructive behavior. Just as trash accumulates in the clean car because people lose sensitivity to disorder, small sins pile up over time.
The author compares going to confession after a long delay to getting a ten-dollar car wash and noticing every piece of trash that subsequently accumulates in the vehicle.
Spiritual Habits
Meaningful spiritual growth often begins when a dedicated friend intervenes patiently. A friend named John stepped into the author's life during a barbecue and spent two years guiding him through the basics of Catholic spirituality. John walked the author step-by-step through spiritual basics, prayed for him daily, and later became an ordained priest before passing away at age forty-eight.
Trusted friends can also intervene to challenge successful individuals to expand their vision. The author spent over 250 days a year traveling for fifteen years, wrote more than a dozen books with about ten million copies sold in more than twenty languages, spoke to over three million people in more than fifty countries, and advised more than forty Fortune 500 clients. On a golf trip, his friends gathered in a hotel suite and told him he needed to make a change to have one hundred times more impact over the next fifteen years, leading to the creation of Dynamic Catholic.
God requires total availability to launch you into your mission without holding back control. The author prayed a prayer of complete surrender and ten minutes later felt tested when his brother asked to borrow his prized golf clubs.
You can adopt these daily disciplines:
- Believe that holiness is possible and guides you toward your best self
- Create a daily habit of prayer for ten minutes a day
- Offer every hour of your life and work to God
- Feed your mind by reading the Bible and spiritual books
- Serve powerfully to make a difference in others' lives
- Attend daily Mass once or twice a week
- Fast in small ways multiple times a day
- Confess sins regularly and open yourself to spiritual coaching
Let Your Light Shine
You are created with a unique mix of talents and good works specifically designed to let your light shine. Resistance attempts to hide this light behind bad habits and fear.
A homebound woman seventy-four years old decided to start her book distribution ministry. She spent three years of writing daily letters to people of influence, ordering bulk cases of books and mailing them to family, friends, world leaders, and celebrities.
Critics will always be present, but perseverance and doing the tiniest next task are antidotes to discouragement. A Winnie the Pooh online film received thirteen million likes and twenty-five thousand dislikes, proving that universally loved creations face haters. Nearly twenty-five years have passed since the author published his first book, driven by persistence and determination.
Gratitude anchors you to the present moment and prevents a sense of entitlement. The author's two-and-a-half-year-old son Harry runs into the office exclaiming with great enthusiasm that he is a very lucky boy.
You can identify your specific blockers:
- Identify which trait among fear, laziness, procrastination, selfishness, addiction, obsession, comparison, critics, comfort zone, self-doubt, gossip, negative relationships, worry, or excuses prevents you from shining
Cultivate daily gratitude and awareness:
- Begin by thanking God in a personal dialogue for whatever you are most grateful for today.
- Revisit the times in the past twenty-four hours when you were and were not the-best-version-of-yourself.
- Talk to God about these situations and what you learned from them.
- Identify something you experienced in the last twenty-four hours and explore what God might be trying to say to you through that event (or person).
- Ask God to forgive you for any wrong you have committed (against yourself, another person, or Him) and to fill you with a deep and abiding peace.
- Speak with God about how He is inviting you to change your life, so that you can experience the freedom to be the-best-version-of-yourself.
- Lift up to God anyone you feel called to pray for today, asking God to bless and guide them.
- PRAY THE OUR FATHER.
10 Key Ideas
- Resistance is a universal enemy manifesting as laziness and self-sabotage that must be slain anew each day to prevent people from finding true joy.
- Nothing on earth can satisfy the human desire for happiness because people are created by God and for God with an inner void that only He can fill.
- Spiritual health requires deliberate cultivation through daily prayer, scripture reading, and continuous learning to dictate the overflow of the exterior life.
- Bringing a small pocket-size notebook to Mass and writing down one personalized insight transforms a passive experience into an active dialogue with God.
- Breaking cycles of self-sabotage, addiction, and inner slavery requires combining prayer with the discipline of fasting from small things.
- The ability to delay gratification is an essential spiritual discipline and a practical skill intimately linked with long-term success.
- Regular confession acts like a spiritual car wash that restores sensitivity to sin and prevents small moral compromises from compounding into major self-destructive behavior.
- God requires total availability to launch you into your unique mission without holding back control of your life.
- Identifying specific blockers such as fear, laziness, procrastination, and self-doubt is necessary to stop them from hiding your light.
- Cultivating daily gratitude and awareness involves thanking God, reviewing personal actions, asking for forgiveness, and praying the Our Father.