How to Avoid Avoidance
Contained within what you are avoiding contains signposts to your own growth
Hello.
Another big year for me, with a lot of change. A second daughter joined us. I launched my own podcast. I attained my Advanced Diploma in Exec Coaching and PCC certification with the ICF.
My work has unfolded into deeper, edgier and some profoundly beautiful places.
Looking to the year ahead, I’m opening space for my first group coaching work. I’m envisioning up to six of us, meeting monthly online, for group coaching sessions. A more affordable, collective way to safely work through questions, topics, challenge and to work towards our dreams, ambitions or goals.
I open some space for:
Group Coaching: Thinking about career change
&
Group Coaching: Navigating Fatherhood
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To today’s article:
How to Avoid Avoidance
Here is my Number #1 tip for procrastination: reflect on what pain you are avoiding. And perhaps explore what part of you is benefitting from the procrastination.
More often than not, I expect you’ll encounter a scared little boy or girl within you who doesn’t want to feel shamed or ridiculed.
A part of you who doesn’t want to experience failure. It not working our perfectly.
A part of you, perhaps, who is scared of the success. Scared of it working out.
A part of you who just wants things to stay the same, even if the logical brain knows it is impossible.
When we slow down, and lead with curiosity and reflection in our lives, we uncover signposts, trails of breadcrumbs to help us learn and grow at a deep, psychological and even spiritual level.
So too with the topic of procrastination or avoidance. Contained within what you are avoiding contains signposts to your own growth.
And so to aim for a quick fix - a ‘how to’ Youtube video, to ask how a friend did it, or even to hire a professional who will meet you at that same high level - will be like trying to fix climate change by switching to paper straws. A noble, potentially helpful gesture, but ultimately a token gesture which doesn’t attend to the deeper shifts needed.
As you read this there are, without doubt, things you are avoiding. They probably involve discomfort. And often it involves telling someone something. Perhaps responding with bad news.
Sales, Emotions, Attachment Theory
Something I learnt very early on in business is that we are rarely working with logic and thoughts. We are emotion-driven mammals, and in any form of work we are dealing with emotions more than we are with logical thoughts.
At some point ‘sales’ became a dirty word in many cultures. A key learning for me is that, essentially, sales is taking the pain away from someone. The pain of not knowing what to do. The pain of feeling inferior because your colleague drives a more expensive car. The fear of being seen as a bad parent or of your child not getting the best possible start in life.
In our most primitive, most vulnerable state as a child, we are reliant on our caregiver for our life. We attach securely, and our pain is soothed. We also develop ways of coping and surviving, patterns of behaviour to protect us.
And these patterns stay with us, sometimes consciously but more often unconsciously.
Your manager is avoiding pain. Your team are avoiding pain. Your founder and CEO is avoiding pain. Your clients are avoiding pain.
Say hello to your lizard brain
Our limbic system was the first to evolve. It sits deepest within our brain, right on top of our spin and hosts some of the most primitive sensations - fear, anxiety, hunger, desire for safety. Hence its nickname: ‘the lizard brain’.
You will encounter situations in your daily life which bring you towards this sensitive area of your mind and your ego. That will rub up against a deep fear that you have worked hard to protect and build fortifications around.
And here is some of the absurdity of modern life. The action might be asking that person you like out for lunch. Or responding to an email saying you don’t want to go ahead with the quote someone sent you. Or attending art class. Or speaking your mind in a meeting.
To so many others, this action might be nothing. But the narrative you construct around it, the meaning you attach to it, takes you on a supersonic highway to a fear of [insert here].
And by not colluding with that avoidance, by not agreeing with it. But by slowing down, showing it curiosity, and by exploring it safely with a qualified professional, you will become more aware of it. And when you become more aware of something, you change your relationship to it. Get some objectivity. Get some choice.
And with that objectivity and choice comes, I believe, not the growth and healing itself, but the signposts and a clearer path towards it.
This has most definitely been the case for my own journey and relationship with avoidance.
I wonder if what you’re avoiding might be like the yellow brick road. Scary, illogical, confusing, with dangers along the way - but ultimately, perhaps, a path towards a deeper understanding of yourself. A path towards acceptance. Or growth.
Wherever you are - either on your own Yellow Brick Road, approaching the Emerald City or back in Kansas, I wish you and your loved ones a joyful, restorative holiday season.
With Gratitude,
George
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Funny enough, I’ve been avoiding opening this email for a week, knowing that a part of me doesn’t want to think about what I’m avoiding!