Chapter 73Pressure Creates Resistance
As the real pros in influencing people know:
PRESSURE CREATES RESISTANCE.
It seems incredible that the novices haven't
learned. Yet they persist in bringing pressure on the people
whose good will they must have in order to succeed. And
pressure inevitably creates resistance-in physics, in psy-
chology, in politics, in salesmanship, in civil rights mili-
tancy, in war, in every relationship involving people.
Certainly, if you possess overwhelming power,
you can impose your will. But you may live to regret it.
(Many people have not lived that long! )
The surest way to increase resistance is to apply
pressure. And the more obvious the pressure, the more
open and hostile the resistance.
Consider the civil rights militants. The gains
supposedly won by pressure-by riots, disruption, violent
demonstrations-were illusionary. They filled a frustrated
need for recognition. They gratified the egos of some am-