Encourage Your Brain: Practice NOT Avoiding

Hey y'all, it's Susan. An update: my daughter visited me this past week and she brought with her, obviously, her talents. And some of her talents involve organizing and ordering things and winnowing things and letting go of things that no longer serve their original purpose and creating environments that really feel spacious and beautiful. So I have a walk-in closet that had become no longer walk-in-able, and she looked at that at and just started wiggling, like, "Let me get my hands on this." I look at it and I go, "I'm overwhelmed. I don't even want to touch it." So I let her at it and she really tackled it, and I wish I had a before and after picture because it was just jaw-dropping amazing. So the thing that I've really noticed was, oh my gosh, what is it about having order, cleanliness, spaciousness that is so encouraging and uplifting? And so I Googled it. And I found a fantastic article on realsimple.com. And in the article they mentioned several things like, you know, you just get endorphins from sort of the exercise of cleaning. But the things that were more brain-friendly to me really spoke to me. One thing was that our external environment is sort of, if it's cluttered or dirty, it's difficult to not internalize that and sort of have it some message about our own self-worth. And then there was one other insight in the article from someone who's a former PR executive turned Zen priest, and she wrote this beautiful quote that said, "If you are practicing avoiding difficult things in one area of your life"—for me, like cleaning my closet—"you do that everywhere." And there's a lot of truth to that, because without realizing it, once that closet was cleaned A couple of days later, I was noticing that I was kind of tackling new things and feeling more energized and getting to things that I'd sort of been putting off, like making several doctor's appointments, one of which involves going to the dermatologist, getting that chemo cream. It's gonna burn my face, it's gonna hurt, it's gonna look ugly, and yes, I was putting it off. You may not see me on camera for a few weeks once I get started on that, but I did it and I jumped on it. So the message in all of this to your brain is practice not avoiding. So here's an offer: choose one thing this coming week that feels like you've been sort of avoiding it, whether it's organizing a drawer that's gone rogue, or it's having a difficult conversation with someone that you've been putting off, or tackling a piece of work that may have been feeling daunting. So do that. Practice not avoiding that. Do that, and then observe what happens in the days to come. And notice too that practice not avoiding is a very different message than just do it, because practice not avoiding is a reframe that shifts us into that learning space, and that's a happy space for our brains. It adds a sense of accomplishment, gives us a sense of self-worth in the process. Okay, bye for now. I am off to practice not avoiding my afternoon exercise.