A river doesn’t fight the landscape. It follows it and still ends up carving canyons.

Force is not the only way to change something. Water gets its way by going where the ground allows and never stopping, which beats any single push against rock. Yielding now and persisting for years are not opposites. Together they are how most large things get done.

Where you are pushing hard against a person or a rule, look for the route that already exists. Keep the direction and drop the confrontation. Then show up again next week, and the week after, because that is the part that does the carving.