stop avoiding!

This is another goal I’ve made more progress on than I’ve realised. Since I first listed this goal I’ve gained awareness of what I avoid and why. I feel I avoid things much less now. Adopting my cultivate grit goal has also gone a long way towards helping with this.

So I’ve decided I’m going to mark it off, even though in some ways it’s an impossible goal. I can’t honestly say I’ll never avoid anything again, but I can say I do it much less.

I think I had a revelation about this yesterday. I had a terrible day for procrastination yesterday and barely got anything done when I felt really needed to. I think the reason for it is because I hadn’t slept very well for the last few nights and had been working pretty hard. I was tired.

Maybe procrastination is my unconscious way of telling myself that I’m not looking after myself—that I need more sleep, to eat properly, to get more exercise or even just to take a break.

I’ve been having a bit of trouble with my rest and recuperate goal. I’ve been very frustrated, feeling like I’m being forced to rest when I really want to be getting things done. I think I have to make sure that I’m not confusing rest with avoidance on any level—conscious or subconscious.

Another goal carried over from 2006. It’s so easy to get discouraged with this goal because it’s hard to be concrete about it. What I’m avoiding is fluid, it changes from day to day and there’s always something I’m avoiding on some level.

But I’m getting better with this lately. I’ve made an appointment with a new doctor (and been to it), I’ve been organising competitions to submit my writing to and I’ve been researching nutrition. I’ve even been dealing with my mail straight away rather than letting it sit around after I’d opened it. I really feel I’m doing much better than last year and whenever I do something straight away instead of procrastinating I feel good about it.

Some further thought is needed about what I need to do in order to consider this goal complete.

Looking through my list of 43 things for 2006 I realised I had doubled up on this goal somewhat with #10 (Finish what I start). Finishing what I start is really all about not avoiding the end of something, so I decided to combine these two goals.

Nevertheless, I’ve realised that I’ve still been avoiding this goal and have barely thought about it this month. I hope to do better in March and perhaps start writing some of the things I’ve been avoiding down in my notebook.

I’ve been going over my list of 43 things to accomplish for 2006 to see what progress I’ve made throughout January. Ironically, when I saw this goal I realised I had been avoiding it. In fact I had been avoiding all the goals under my ‘personal’ tag, with the exception of #1 (Journal on a regular basis). I haven’t even written any entries detailing why I picked them to include in my list. So, in the spirit of this goal, I’m starting today.

I think one of the things that intimidates me most about this goal, and the others under the same tag, is that it’s extremely difficult to come up with a plan or a concrete way of tackling them. What they require most is simply awareness and that’s something I often find difficult to consciously produce. I understand awareness is certainly not something that happens overnight, but I have this unrealistic expectation that for me it should.

What’s most important, though, is simply to start. So for February I’m going to try and have more awareness about what I’m avoiding.