What Are You Avoiding?
An inquiry and five steps for moving into action!
An Inquiry: Looking at Avoidance
What thing, activity, person, or emotion
are you avoiding or do you typically try to avoid?
Consider the following three areas where avoidance may occur…
Emotions & Feelings
Are there negative emotions you find yourself drowning in today? What are they and where do you feel them in your body?
Grab your journal and write down some quick, freely written notes.
Now, are there positive emotions you are delaying the sensation of feeling because you are stuck in the negative, avoiding the positive?
What might be these positive emotions and the accompanying sensations you’d invite into your mental, physical, spiritual body if only you’d allow yourself to make the shift?
Again, make some brief notes, writing without overthinking or judging.
Next, let’s go in the opposite direction…
Have you placed yourself in a constant, artificial state of happiness as you attempt to avoid uncomfortable or unenjoyable emotions?
If you are delaying the emotions that are uncomfortable, and instead are putting on a false or forced happy face…Why might you be doing this?
Don’t worry about journaling the right thing…just write freely, without editing. If you aren’t in the mood to write, make some good mental notes or tap some words into your phone’s notes app.
Actions
What are the things that need to happen that you aren’t doing?
What are some things you are delaying?
What habits do you have in place that aren’t healthy or beneficial to your moving forward, making your dreams happen, or simply making the day flow as you’d like it to?
Again, quickly write it all down…there’s no need to perfect the writing…(the need for perfection could be seen as a type of avoidance!).
People
Who needs something from you or is waiting on you to do something?
Who could use some kind words, encouragement, support, a listening ear, a thank you?
Who needs an apology?
Why are you avoiding these people and the connected activities that would cause your interaction with them?
Make some more notes, doddle some hearts next to the names…
Five Steps to Help You Act
Now that you have your freely written, unedited notes on all the people, activities, and emotions you’re currently avoiding, here are five steps to help move you out of avoidance into acton, and allow you to create a nice, realistic, to-do list that you’ll enjoy completing (rather than avoiding)!
Step One — Don’t over-think things.
If something needs to happen, maybe you need to send an email or make a phone call, acknowledge and accept that the thing needs to happen and do the thing.
No rumination or overthinking, just acknowledge, accept, and act.
The more we think and stew,
the more we avoid.
The more we say to ourselves,
“I need to make that phone call to so-and-so. Let me pick up the phone and call right now…” versus,
“I need to make that phone call, but I think I’ll do it later, when my circumstances might be different, better, quieter…”
…the easier it is to do the thing rather than avoid the thing.
When you are stuck in a pattern of inaction, it is probably because you’ve been thinking about “doing” this action for too long,
instead of allowing the thinking-of-the-thing to cause the doing-of-the-thing.
Let’s look at another example: Exercising.
When we think and think about doing some exercise, we rarely get around to actually doing the exercise because we’ve been thinking too much about it (and probably how much we don’t want to do it).
Instead of over-thinking about exercising, allow the single thought…”I need to go for a walk”…to instantly cause you to move yourself into the action of putting on your shoes and going on the walk.
Don’t think more than once about taking the walk…acknowledge and accept that you need to take the walk…then take the walk!
And with the avoidance of feelings…
How you feel right now may be very different from how you want to feel.
To acknowledge and accept (rather than avoid) emotions or feelings, it’s wise to…
consider the feelings or emotions you’d like to experience,
imagine yourself in a setting where these sensations of feeling and emotion come naturally to you, and
go out into the world, place yourself in activities or around others, that will allow you to embody these feelings…shifting all the goodness you’ve been avoiding into a beautiful new reality of being.
Step Two — Develop new action-oriented habits.
Repetition is key to moving away from avoidance and into action.
Take action by committing to a new habit for one week or one month. Maybe this new habit consists of only the weekdays or one day of the week.
Sticking with the exercise example from above…perhaps you can, without over-thinking it, commit to taking a morning walk every Monday through Friday for the next month.
Once you decide what you want to do, don’t think about it anymore.
Monday morning, wake up, put on walking clothes and shoes, and take the walk.
This allows you to release the need to think about it, which is so freeing, liberating, and action-oriented. You’ve already thought about it, that’s why it is on your calendar, and that’s when you’ll do it!
Also, you’ll want to create new habits for the people you need and want to interact with, and the emotions and feelings you want to experience on a regular basis (habitually!).
Step Three — Know your avoidance comes from fear.
Take a look at the initial list of things you are avoiding…feelings and emotions, actions, and people. Can you find a theme in the avoidance of these things?
Consider for a moment that…F E A R…is at the root of your avoidance.
What does fear look like to you?
When you look at or consider the feeling or sensation of fear, where in your body do you experience fear?
It could be the sensation of anxiety in a racing heart, or the sensation of overwhelm in a headache. You may write these things down, or sit quietly with closed eyes and remember yourself experiencing fear, worry, anxiety, overwhelm, stress, sadness.
Fear is transient.
Unless you ask fear, or any other emotion, to stick around, it will dissipate. And when you avoid, you’ve likely welcomed fear into your life…and it sticks with you, especially when you are over-thinking about the things you are avoiding! That’s fear for you!
Invite fear, in all of its forms, to leave you now. Thank it for all the times it kept you alert, for the times when you needed that quick burst of anxiety to get you through a test or to meet a deadline. But ask it to go now, because today is the time to act, not avoid or delay.
Step Four — Use an intention or mantra.
Start working with a mantra, intention, or short phrase or keyword to kickstart your new habits of action!
Keeping with the exercise example…each morning you wake up, before you set out on your walk, say to yourself, “I am alive!” “I am strong! “Let’s Go!” or “I feel strength and courage in my muscles!” or “I am strong and courageous!”
Use intentions, mantras, or phrases to replace the obsessive loops of unproductive over-thinking, avoidance inducing in-action in your life and watch your mind and world shift!
Step Five — Believe, embody…and enjoy!
When you use an intention you shift your entire mindset from one of avoidance to action!
From there, you begin to believe you can do what needs to be done. You’ve replaced the root feeling of fear with courage, persistence, belief.
You find that when you acknowledge and accept that which needs doing, and you act upon these things at the moment of acknowledgement, you embody the positive feelings you’ve been avoiding, you create a daily to-do list that gets done, and you engage with the people you’re committed to.
When you follow the five steps, you…
Intend yourself into action!
And when you are in action - mentally, physically, spiritually - stagnation, decay, delay, procrastination, and avoidance cannot exist.
Final thoughts…
I’m an avoidant, procrastinator-type! So I’ll be reviewing the steps here frequently as we near the ending of this year and the beginning of another New Year…a prime time to create and commit to new habits that will drive us towards our goals and dreams.
As this article comes to a close…
You may like to pause for a moment…Sitting quietly…Hands on heart or placed gently in your lap…
Inhale with the words ~ “I am”
Exhale with the words ~ “abundance in action”
Rest here, comfortably, for as long as you like, and then…instead of over-thinking, fearing, and avoiding…
Acknowledge, Accept, Act
xoxo Michelle