Looking for adventure? Willing to take a risk? Here’s the challenge: what’s one of the most common feelings you avoid or resist?

Recently I was asked this question when I was out to dinner with a friend and my first thought was, “Hmmm, interesting question. Hey, maybe we should get appetizers? Do you want to order appetizers? What’s good here?”

My friend called me out on this obvious attempt to avoid or resist thinking about what I avoid and resist. But I didn’t cave in immediately. I mean we were out to have some fun and enjoy ourselves. Why would we want to look at what we’re avoiding? We are avoiding it for a reason.

“But aren’t you into increasing your consciousness?” my friend asked. “Don’t you want to look head-on at the very things you’re avoiding?”

I smiled sheepishly and said, “I know you want me to say yes!”

“I don’t want to pressure you into facing anything,” my friend said. “I just want to point out that anything you avoid at the cost of consciousness ends up having so much power over you – power over your energy – power over you living fully and doing the things you’re capable of doing. In what ways might your avoidance be holding you back?“

“I’m not really sure,” I responded. “It doesn’t seem like avoiding uncomfortable feelings is holding me back at all. It seems like I’m a lot happier and content without the things that make me uncomfortable. That seems obvious.”

Adventures in Disappointment“How about this?” my friend suggested, taking another approach. “Think about the monster under the bed – the one you worried about when you were little. Remember how much power that monster had? Remember how scary that was?”

“Yes! I hated that!”

“And remember when you finally got brave enough to look at it and face it head-on? When you did that, the monster’s power disappeared!”

“Yes!” I laughed. “That’s so true!”

“The monster lost its power to scare you once you were willing to look at it. Facing it was uncomfortable, but pretty quickly it became no big deal. It no longer prevented you from falling asleep. And in time, you stopped thinking about the monster altogether. That’s exactly how increased consciousness of the ‘monsters’ you’re avoiding helps you to deflate their power.”

“O.K.,” I said, “if I’m willing to do this, what’s the first step?”

“The first step is awareness. You need to identify it. It’s like a laundry stain. You can’t work with it if you don’t know what it is.”

I think about my stained laundry that’s piled in a dark corner to deal with some other day. You know – the day that I’ll wake up super motivated to tackle a big pile of hard to release laundry stains – or in other words – a day that comes around never?

My friend, bless her heart, tries reframing this. “Laundry isn’t the best analogy. How can we make this fun? . .  . I’ve got it! Think of this as an adventure – you take a little risk – but the reward will be sweet.”

I wasn’t sure – but ok – I usually love the challenge of an adventure. I decided to give the question some serious thought. The first thought that came to mind is that I commonly try to avoid disappointment. When something disappointing does happen I immediately look for the Adventures in Disappointmentbright side. I like that about me. It keeps me happy. I like happy. I see no problems here. But I agreed to play this game so I move on to step 2.  “What’s Step 2?”

“Step 2 is to face the feeling head-on. What happens if you stay with disappointment for a bit?”

“And the point of staying with disappointment is what? “ I ask, at the risk of sounding dense, because this doesn’t seem like a good idea, so I just want to be clear.

“The point is to stay with it long enough to deflate its power. Without allowing it, you’re completely unconscious of the power it is having over you and the energy you’re using to avoid it.”

“Ok – right. I’ll give it a try. I’ll let myself sit with the discomfort of disappointment. But can we set a time limit on this?”

“ Absolutely. Can you handle 5 minutes? “

“Just 5 minutes? That’s it? Sure. I can do that.”

I decide to start small and think about my disappointment about the gloomy cold rainy weather. Pretty quickly into this line of thinking I notice the knee jerk reaction of wanting to come up with the bright side – “weather like this helps me to get lots of work done!” How funny that my brain can’t help itself. As I watch this happen I decide to let the bright side go and refocus on my disappointment.

The next thing I notice is a thought that jumps in to shame me for feeling disappointed over the weather. “Really? You’re going to feel bad just because of the weather? That is so dumb. Talk about a first world problem! I mean seriously, there are a lot bigger things to be disappointed about – and if this is the best you can do you’ve got a pretty amazing life. You should really be embarrassed to even come up with this as your disappointment exercise.”

This is getting interesting now as I watch my brain employ these different strategies to keep me from feeling disappointed. I’m impressed with how clever and effective my brain is. It makes me giggle. I love how it starts out all sneaky and sunshiny kind with its ‘look on the bright side ideas’ and when that doesn’t work it moves immediately to shame – which I have to admit is pretty effective. I nearly cave in to the shame and stop the exercise. But because I’m in the observer mode I’m able to spot the tactic and I defeat it by exposing it. Now what?

“Step 3 is to pay attention to body sensations,” my friend says, trying to help me shift my focus from my thoughts to my body,

I notice muscle tension in my chest and arms. My stomach feels heavy and dull. The sensations are pretty subtle actually.  And then I notice the sensations run their course and I no longer feel any discomfort in my body. The feeling of disappointment has lost its charge.

I stay focused on my body for another minute and nothing new happens. There’s still 2 minutes left – which gives me time to marvel at the new sense of freedom I have. Disappointment seems like no big deal. It’s not that difficult to be present to the sensations of it. I know I wasn’t dealing with a giant disappointment – but still – it gives me hope that even bigger disappointments can be dealt with more effectively with this technique. It’s a technique that feels more powerful than looking on the bright side or going to shame.

The biggest ‘aha’ in this experience is a new awareness of the amount of energy I was using to avoid experiencing disappointment. Previously I wasn’t aware that I was using any energy at all to avoid it. In fact, it seemed like it was going to take a lot more energy to face it than it would take to avoid it. This is hard to explain and perhaps just needs to be experienced – but it reminds me of the fear of having a shot, which is way worse than the experience of the shot itself.

This whole exercise has me thinking about what new avenues might open up for me if I’m not worried one bit about disappointment. I entertain the idea of organizing an event that I may not be 100% ready for. What if I proposed it anyway, just to see what happens, and risked disappointment, but also invited opportunity? What if I took the risk of figuring it out on the fly? It could be fun! It could be disappointing.

I realize I can handle it either way.

I don’t know what will happen next, but it turns out this facing the feeling I like to avoid IS a great adventure – well worth the risk. Super sweet! Increased consciousness wins again as the path I want to follow – come what may.

~ Sue Hardman-Conklin