Another way of looking at it is living life the opposite of what you are resisted to. Focusing your energies on the positives in your life instead of on the negatives of what you are struggling with.
Instead of, for example, saying "I need or want alcohol" one could say, "I am happy and healthy and greatful for me and I am doing positive and healthy things for myself." Or whatever positive affirmation you want to say.
I will give you a direct example from my own experiece. If you believe in the whole LoA bit, and "asking, believing, gratitude, action" etc or however it goes, then you will understand me better.
There was a behaviour that I struggled with daily, even many times a day.
I would pray to God every night for helping me overcome my suffering.
Then I realized I was looking at it wrong.
Instead, I started to be thankful for being in a mode of recovery. I started to see improvement... but still had setbacks. I said to myself.... "I don't want to be suffering. I don't want to be recovering. I want to be RECOVERED."
So every night and every day I'd pray and meditate on how greatful I felt for being happy, healthy, and recovered. And I realized the more I did this, the more the negative behaviours and impulse for the negative behaviours fell away from me.
It is HARD work but MUCH easier than using good ol will power. It's a matter of taking responsibility for what I'm thinking and how I'm feeling, and not letting things come up to the point of a yes or no choice, but taking care of it, and myself, before that point, to build me up with strength and love and to have other things in place, ready to go so that whatever the impulse might have been, is not even present. It has made a DRASTIC improvement in my life.
And it is VERY hard to do it alone, it's easier when you have the support of others. BUT-- it is very empowering to be able to be accountable to yourself at the end of the day. It just makes the good feelings multiply like crazy and then it gives you even more strength to keep going on and doing great.
But you can do it. If you want to do it, believe you can do it, then you can. Plain and simple.
And yes... for me it is a little like strength training. But instead of building resistance to it, I am building up love for myself, strength for myself, because in my heart and mind I know that which I am resisting will persist.
Therefore I build a happy me, healthy me and a life in which there is no suffering or illness. Adopting that attitude and believing it wholeheartedly has helped me, in those sticky times, to say "no, that's not how a recovered, healthy person acts!"
Disclaimer... it's not always easy. Most of the times it's damn hard. But is the mental exertion worth it... DAMN STRAIGHT!
And I find the more I stick with it the easier it gets.