The cost of avoidance

In Confident Communicator workshops, we say that avoidance is unworkable, meaning when we avoid communicating with someone because it’s uncomfortable, worse problems arise.

When we avoid, we fail to see the possibility of choosing between alternatives. We deny ourselves options.

Think of an example in your life where you didn’t have the courage to say something, to have a needed conversation. Maybe you didn’t ask someone on a date for fear of rejection. Maybe you didn’t tell your boss how his behavior affected you, and you ended up having to live with it. Then ask yourself: was the tradeoff worth it?

Building communication skills is like building a brick house.

All of the construction materials are laying all around you, and you have plenty of them. Some bricks look nicer than others, they’re clean and new and shaped well. Some are broken, or dirty, or not sturdy enough to be used. These broken bricks are your difficult experiences, the symptoms of negative thoughts and feelings. When you build your house, which bricks will you chose to use?

If you only used the nice, new, perfect bricks, it would be a much smaller house, wouldn’t it?

What if underneath a pile of nasty bricks there were some beautiful bricks you couldn’t see?

Even if you build a small house with just the nice bricks, the ugly ones would be scattered throughout your yard, in your way, calling out to be dealt with. You may reach the point where you don’t ever want to leave your house because the yard is such a mess.

On the other hand, how much more comfortable would your house be if you used all the bricks available and learned how to live with both the nice and nasty bricks?

How big would your life be, if you chose to keep expanding?