“You can lead a mule to water but remember what a wet mule smells like.” The Electric Weenie

Stubborn can be defined as inflexible, obstinate, immovable and a host of other synonyms. Stubbornness most often is a fear – a fear of being found out. Many people who display stubbornness have something to hide. The problem is they have hidden it where everyone can see it if you’re willing to look.

When someone won’t cop to what everyone else, including them, knows, it is a desperate attempt to keep them from receiving ridicule – a fate worse than death for them.

They have so much invested in their public persona (ego), that admitting to something that doesn’t fit the image is a crippling fear. The defense mechanism is to be stubborn. No amount of effort by you is going to move that mule. Denial is the offshoot of stubbornness – another defense layer to keep ridicule at bay.

We have all been stubborn and have encountered others who are stubborn. So, as my old friend, Terry Butler would say, “What’s your real question?”

How do you get a stubborn person to come clean? The answer is: You can’t.

It is always a personal discovery. You can continue to box them into logical corners, but their escape hatch is usually an emotional outburst that has nothing to do with the topic that was being discussed. Oftentimes, that conversation will contain a red herring to put the onus on you. Even if you get them on the witness stand, your facts can expose them even more but their dramatic denials make O.J.’s look like puppy chow.

For a stubborn person to see the light, they must, as Eckhart Tolle says,

“Die before you die.”

That means that our image of ourselves has to dissolve before the light of life can shine through. Our ego is the most stubborn thing we will encounter in our lives. It keeps us propping up the cardboard cutout of ourselves and passing it off as the real thing. Stubbornness dissolves naturally when we finally realize that no amount of denial will keep this hand puppet alive.

When we finally surrender to life, we find out that our dirty little secret can be cleansed and that forgiveness flows effortlessly in our direction.

All the best,

John