4 Reasons the Thing You’re Avoiding Is the Most Important Thing to Do

The thing you keep avoiding isn’t random. Here are 4 reasons why doing the hard thing is often the key to unlocking greater levels of freedom and growth.

How often do you find yourself avoiding a task for days, weeks, and even months?

Although you keep putting it off till later, deep down you know it's something that would make you feel a lot better if you just faced it head on.

The things we avoid are rarely random - they are often the exact things that have the power to move our lives forward in a significant way.

Here are 4 reasons why the thing you're avoiding is actually the most important thing you can do right now.

1. It's draining your mental energy

Have you noticed that the longer you put off a task, the more you dread doing it?

That's because when you put off a task till later, it doesn't just go away - it keeps sitting at the back of your mind until you address it.

Procrastination drains your mental energy as you balance both the things you're currently doing and the things you know you should be doing but aren't.

This is one of the main reasons why the thing you are avoiding is the most important thing you can do right now.

The longer you've been putting it off, the longer it's draining your mental resources.

You've turned it into a greater problem than it ever needed to be in the first place.

By completing it right now, you restore a sense of balance and control.

You free up mental space to be able to relax and focus on other things, because you've removed a heavy mental load that's slowly been draining your willpower.

2. It's a golden ticket to building self-trust

Every time you say you're going to do something - but don't - your brain pays attention.

No one else might know, but the "you" that lives inside you knows and takes notes.

Your brain forms your identity and self-concept based on the actions you actually take in your daily life - not the actions you say you're going to take.

That's why one of the most effective ways to build self-trust and form a solid sense of identity is to keep the promises you make to yourself.

Self-trust is a powerful thing because the more you trust yourself, the more you are willing to take risks and improve your life, because your track record builds your confidence in yourself and your abilities.

So doing the thing you've been avoiding the most is one of the greatest gifts you can give to yourself, because you train your brain that you're someone who does what you say you're going to do.

3. The Principle of The One Thing

The One Thing - one of my favourite books of all time - proposes a question called the focusing question, which is:

What's the ONE Thing I can do such that by doing it, everything else will be easier or unnecessary?

This question is an excellent question to ask because it drastically simplifies the list of all the things you think you should be doing.

It gets you more bang for your buck.

Maybe after you ask yourself this question, you realize that the thing you've been avoiding the most is actually the thing that moves the needle most.

This means that if you actually do it, everything else will be easier or unnecessary.

Take inventory of some of the major issues you're dealing with right now, and I'll guarantee you'll find that most of them are connected in some way.

Avoidance often creates additional problems.

Once you dig deeper, you might discover that items two and three on your list are actually just issues that were created because of not doing item 1, and if you do item 1, everything get solved at once.

4. You reach the root of emotional resistance

If there's something you keep avoiding despite knowing the benefits, it means that deep down you have some emotional resistance towards the action.

To get that thing done, you have to reach the root of the emotional resistance.

That then becomes your superpower that you can use to understand and overcome your resistance to other important things.

For example, you may realize that you are avoiding a certain task because of fear of failure.

When you are able to come to terms with that and do it anyway, you've then given yourself permission to do other things that you would usually be scared to do for the same reason.

You decide that you're going to put forth the effort regardless of the outcome, because the effort itself is valuable.

That then becomes a transferrable skill that you can apply to other things that you would normally also avoid doing.

In this way, doing the hard thing you've been avoiding becomes the key that unlocks your greatest potential.

Final thoughts

You may not be able to complete everything on your to-do list immediately, but that's okay because you often don't actually have to.

If you take the time to single out the singular most important task and actually complete it, you'll likely discover that everything else on your list becomes easier or even unnecessary.

The benefits of doing the hard thing you're avoiding are not just practical - they're psychological.

Once you do one hard thing successfully, you prove to yourself that you're someone who can do hard things.

Once you realize this, you're able to keep pushing forward with other hard things, no matter what resistance you face.

What's the hard thing you're most excited to tackle first?

You might be surprised how much smoother everything else gets when that's out of the way.

To your success,

Roli Edema

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