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Next time you want to participate in your favorite activity, you might want to notice your intent. Do you want to relax and watch TV or are you avoiding some difficult feeling or task? Do you find yourself scheduling more work than you can really handle to avoid dealing with aloneness, loneliness, or conflict with a mate, or are you really loving your work and feeling fulfilled by it? Are you exercising to support your health or to avoid feelings?
Once you become aware of using an activity to avoid, here’s what you can do about it:
1)Welcome
feeling you are trying so hard to avoid. Pay attention to feeling - fear, loneliness, aloneness, agitation, boredom, anxiety.
2) Make a decision to learn what YOU might be doing to cause this feeling rather than continuing to avoid it.
3) Explore what you might be doing to cause this feeling. How are you not taking care of yourself that is causing your painful feeling? Are you procrastinating, judging yourself, or not standing up for yourself in conflict? How are you avoiding responsibility for your own well-being? Are you allowing yourself to be a victim, waiting for someone else to make you feel better?
4) Once you understand what you are doing to cause your distress, then you need to ask "What would be loving action for myself?" You are asking this question of your highest self, or of your spiritual guidance if you are connected with a source of guidance. If you open to learning about what is loving, ideas will pop into your mind.
5) Now you need to take loving action on your own behalf - complete a task, stand up for yourself and speak your truth with someone, and so on.
6) Re-evaluate how you are feeling. Are you feeling more peaceful and more powerful? You will feel more peaceful if you have taken loving action. If you are not feeling better, don’t just turn back to your addictions. Look for another loving action until you find what really makes you feel safe on a deep level, not just temporary pacification of an addiction.
You will find your addictions fading away as you learn to take loving care of yourself.
