Hi guys, welcome to episode 198 of the Wildly Successful Lifestyle podcast! Thanks for hanging out with me today!
This last week I realized something about myself. Well I’ve always known it but it kind of became obvious that it’s an unnecessary problem this week.
So my husband’s sister and her fiance moved from California to TN and they bought a house a few minutes from us. We are so happy they did. So I’ve been helping them make their house beautiful. Part of that is we ordered some custom cut rugs a month ago and they were supposed to be installed Wednesday. I found out late Friday afternoon that they got lost somehow and didn’t make it. My sister in law has been so excited and hasn’t even arranged things because she was just waiting for the rugs to do that. So this news for me was very painful. I don’t like being the bearer of bad news so I avoided telling her all day Saturday. Then Sunday Eric finally said “Heidi, you have to tell her”. “There’s never a good time to give bad news”. You know the John Mayer song where he sings “Bad news never has good timing”. What I realized about myself is that I was hanging on to the bad news thinking I could spare her disappointment at least for the weekend but in the meantime it’s weighing on me. I wanted to avoid it like it wasn’t there but that didn’t make it go away it just exasperated it. For me anyway. So I did it. I just called her and broke the news to her. She is such a trooper, she just said “Well things happen”. I felt a ton of bricks fall off my back with just that one little call.
Immediately I felt better AND she was able to get her house put together if she wanted instead of waiting for a rug that wasn’t coming any time soon.
It was better for everyone in the long run to just be honest. But I had to ask myself why is that so hard for me? I hadn’t done anything wrong but I felt like I had. In my mind, I had let her down but she didn’t see it that way at all.
When we avoid things…hard things…it usually just makes it harder the longer we delay.
It reminds me that the problem isn’t going away, it’s just causing more pain for me because I had all this time to think about what she would say and how disappointed she was going to be. I created all these things in my head and yeah she was disappointed but she took it like a champ.
The weight of it and the worry of it was way worse than the actual conversation. Way worse. And this is not just avoiding things like giving bad news. Avoidance in general kind of makes things worse.
For instance with your health. If you’re avoiding taking care of yourself until some imaginary perfect time to start, it’s not going to and in the meantime it makes you feel bad physically and mentally. Yes it’s hard to eat healthy but it’s harder being unhealthy. And from experience..it took me about 6 weeks of completely healthy eating to not want to go back. At first I was grumpy and poor Eric when I would try to find something I could eat at a restaurant. He was a trooper. It may have been harder for him.
It’s not much different from avoiding hard things you need to do. “Bills, yearly checkups, even putting my new teeth trays in. I have Invisalign and I literally have anxiety every time I have to start a new tray because I’m worried it won’t fit right or it will be painful all the things so I usually wear my current tray way longer than I should simply because I have anxiety about going to the next one. But then when I go to the next one, it’s uncomfortable and it’s hard at first to get in but it’s always fine.
We torture ourselves with worry so much more when we avoid doing the hard things.
How about the scale? Have you maybe been avoiding that? So many people, mainly women, are terrified of getting on the scale especially near the holidays because well there’s food everywhere but it’s really just information right? Getting on the scale just tells you where you are. If you don’t get on it, you have no idea where you are and therefore could compound the problem but if you get on it and it’s a little higher than you wanted, now you know. Maybe you get on it and it’s a little better?? Now you know. Either way you have information and can proceed accordingly. I had a weird thing happen when I was on my protocol for removing yeast from my gut I actually got nervous getting on the scale because I was losing too much weight but every time I get on it even if I don’t like what it says I feel relief because now I know and I can decide how to proceed. Our primitive brain wants to keep us safe and away from pain so it will encourage you to avoid it. The logical brain knows it’s better to know and be aware.
But most of the time if you aren’t living intentionally, you’re living from your primitive brain which keeps you on autopilot and in avoidance.
And avoidance is a problem in itself. Like me not wanting to tell my sister in law her rug was going in..that weighed on me and I felt such a relief once I did tell her and it wasn’t so bad. It usually never is as bad as you create it to be.
So. What are you avoiding? Is that avoidance weighing on you?
My challenge to you this week is to pick one thing you’ve been avoiding and just do it. Make the call. Get on the scale. Sit down and do that hard thing. You’ll feel relief and when you realize it wasn’t so bad, then it might encourage you to do another hard thing you’ve been avoiding and another and pretty soon you’ve gone from autopilot to living intentionally…and that puts you on the path to living your version of a wildly successful lifestyle!
Life is going to throw you curve balls. That’s just life. Let’s not add to it by creating unnecessary problems with avoidance.
Share this with one person today. You can practice your non avoidance with that! I love you guys and I’ll talk to you in a few days.
