Busy Avoiding?

"It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?"n-Henry David Thoreau

I have been really enjoying my busiest speaking month of the year. I get to visit beautiful places and meet fabulous people. I get to share my heartfelt message and inspire my audiences to go home and do something different. I also get to be really busy and avoid all the things I don't want to do.

My latest avoidance achievement is my new website. Last fall I hired a talented and creative team to help me brainstorm, design, and optimize my new site. I wanted to re-create myself, update my photos, package my new topics, and promote my new book. I wanted to serve my clients better with a blog and great resource links. And ever since, I have bee
"too busy" to give it the time, energy, and focus needed to make decisions, write copy or even select photographs!

We usually avoid things out of a special kind of fear called "approach fear" since we experience it before we ever reach whatever it is we're afraid of. We make up big ugly stories about what might happen—how others will react, how hard something will be, how we could make a mistake or even fail, and so on...

Of course all that avoidance ends up being more draining than just tackling the project, so I finally decided to move forward on my new website. Guess what? It wasn't nearly as difficult as I'd been telling myself. All it took was these three considerations:

Devote a set amount of uninterrupted time for full immersion and focus.

Give myself permission not to do everything at once, to avoid overwhelm.

Choose a higher-energy (lower-resistance) time of day like early morning to do it.

What are you avoiding in your life right now? A conversation, an appointment, a project or perhaps a decision of some kind? Try making the time and discover how unfounded your "approach fears" really are. I look forward to hearing how you confronted your busyness and avoidance—and your feedback on my soon-to-be-launched new website!