It wasn’t until I sat down across from my therapist and had it spelled out for me that I realized I’d lived most of the past year in a cycle of avoidance. I’d like to think I’m special but I know I’m not the only one who has survived 2021 instead of living it. I hope as much as that conversation was a wake up call that this can be a wake up call for someone else stumbling along wondering why they aren’t moving forward. 

In 2020 I left my partner of 6 years, it just so happened to coincide with the start of a global pandemic. I laugh now but truly what a mess. I got stuck in this mentality of “surviving”. Doing whatever it took at whatever expense to just make it from sunrise to sunset. Turns out “whatever” it took was chain smoking joints and at what expense was my mental health.  

Avoidance does not mean less anxiety it just means postponing that anxiety, or casting it aside to deal with another day. Except when you’re living in the middle of an unpredictable global pandemic, each day seems more challenging than the last so those anxieties or issues never get addressed just suppressed.

A simple way to be more mindful and avoid less:

Keep a written record of your daily activities. Record what you did and how it made you feel and what you did about that feeling. If like me you found that the answer to every unsettling feeling was to smoke some weed then maybe take a deeper look. Remember avoidance doesn’t just appear in smoking or drinking but also through risky sexual behaviour, over eating and over spending.

Instead of rushing to “avoid” or diffuse the unwanted feeling I challenge you to sit with it. Sit with it, feel it, cry it out and then move on. Your mind has enough going on it in it doesn’t need to hold onto each days stressors and compile them them like a chipmunk hoarding nuts for winter. 

Are you ready to live in 2022 and not just survive?