Issue 14: Avoidance
THE LEAP
BY QUANTUM ORANGE
GROW, EXPAND & EVOLVE
ISSUE 14 | AVOIDANCE
Each week The (Quantum) Leap summarises a key aspect of success into what you need to Think, Feel and Do to create a personal shift.
Over the long term, your life is on hold. The depth, height, and reach of your very existence is limited by your day-after-day, week-after-week, year-after-year attempts to avoid feelings that are, ultimately, unavoidable.
~ Matthew McKay
THINK
Avoidance is a common part of life - just be careful it does not become a way of life.
Long term avoidance hinders personal growth, prevents you from experiencing the victory of overcoming fears or challenges and diminishes your quality of life.
Why do you do it? Simple - avoidance protects you from something you perceive to be a threat.
Try observing your thoughts…
Do you ruminate, constantly preparing for ‘what if’ scenarios, going over details and plans in your head, hoping to protect yourself from future disasters?
Doing so can be related to a number of fears - of starting, of failure or success, of not being good enough, even not being up to the task at hand. In any of those examples, the fear and rumination lead to inaction, which further compromises confidence and therefore encourages avoidance.
To move forward, look deeper…
What is driving the rumination? What is holding back giving you? Often, thinking is used as a defence against feeling.
Do you feel others will look down on you if you don’t do something well?
Does failure frighten you?
Do you want others to value you, so you avoid starting because you don't believe you're good enough to achieve without losing face?
FEEL
When you have the realisation that you should be doing something but you aren’t (psychologists call this cognitive dissonance), you can choose to respond in one of four ways:
- Distract yourself and think of something else
- Downplay the importance of the thing you’re meant to be doing
- Seek new information that supports your inaction
- Take a deep breath, adjust your perspective and get on with it
The problem with choosing options 1-3 is you won’t feel good about yourself. That’s uncomfortable, so you’ll tell yourself a story about why you’re not getting the thing done.
Now, you’ve got avoidance and deception.
Both are attempts to prevent the possible impact of a perceived threat - but they don’t really work, because deep down you know you’re doing it, even if you haven’t acknowledged it yet.
Here’s how to move forward:
- Watch the stories you’re telling yourself very carefully.
- Question your thoughts vigorously (but kindly).
- Acknowledge that avoidance doesn’t actually work in the long run - in fact, the pain of avoidance is often greater than the pain of action.
- Allow yourself to experience the emotion driving your avoidance - take a breath, let it in, explore it and let it go. It will wash over you and recede like a wave, just as emotions are meant to.
- Take action.
DO
Avoidance is an emotional reaction to what you need to do. Instead of allowing yourself to get bogged down by the emotion - use the rational part of your brain to identify what avoidance in this circumstance has/may cost you.
Make a list of things you have been avoiding doing. Next to each item on the list, note the impact of avoidance in terms of your happiness, health, finances, relationships, stress and so on.
Select one of the tasks on that list - perhaps the one having the biggest negative impact. Break the task down into action steps and take the first two.
Just get started.
Once you do, you’ll realise things are rarely as bad as you expected and the way you think and feel about yourself will begin to shift.
Read. Watch. Listen.
