personal development on Avoidance

A typical response to threat and burden is to want to flee it. It’s evacuation as the cure for trouble. If only I could get away is our mantra. Then I would be safe. Then I could enjoy my life. But wh...

What’s the difference between avoiding pain and seeking appropriate comfort? I have a friend who says, “The first episode of my favorite TV show is soothing. But if I’m watching the fifth episode in a...

Gracious God, thank you for the responsibilities you have entrusted to us and for all you have given us to fulfill them. Sometimes, Lord, we can feel overwhelmed by the challenges. A part of us wants ...

When we truly need to do is often what we most feel like avoiding.

Neurosis is the natural by-product of pain avoidance.

Emotional intelligence does not mean merely "being nice". At strategic moment it may demand not "being nice", but rather, for example, bluntly confronting someone with an uncomfort...

Pushing aside emotions only makes them stronger.

A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.”

Running away from a problem only increases the distance from the solution. The easiest way to escape from the problem is to solve it.

“Laws of silence don't work.... When something is festering in your memory or your imagination, laws of silence don't work, it's just like shutting a door and locking it on a house on fire...

John O’Donahue, in his book, Walking in Wonder, shares a story from India that is thousands of years old, but just as relevant today as it was back then. It’s about a man who was forced to spend a nig...

Compassion literally means to feel with, to suffer with. Everyone is capable of compassion, and yet everyone tends to avoid it because it's uncomfortable. And the avoidance produces psychic numbin...

Being a Christian is less about cautiously avoiding sin than about courageously and actively doing God's will.

Nothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction, but nothing is more frightening than to be divested of a crutch.

People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own souls.