Coaching clients inevitably find themselves stumbling across the need to do some deep work around something they are trying to avoid. Avoidance shows up in various forms. Starting something new, stopping something old, or making a change.

It’s likely that only you know what that thing is for you…A difficult conversation that needs to happen. A career change that is risky or scary. Launching a new program, product, or service that you believe the world needs. Whatever it is, rather than jump in, we find ourselves avoiding it.

Why do we avoid the thing we most want or most need to do? Manson’s Law of Avoidance: The more something threatens your identity, the more you will avoid doing it.

“That means that the more something threatens to change how you view yourself, how you believe yourself to be, the more you will procrastinate ever getting around to doing it.” -Mark Manson, The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck

One surprising element of The Law of Avoidance is that it can apply to both good and bad things in one’s life. “Making a million dollars can threaten your identity just as much as losing all of your money. Becoming wildly successful can threaten your identity just as much as losing your job. This is why people are often so afraid of success — for the exact same reason they’re afraid of failure — it threatens who they are and what they know now.”

Manson adds, “Until we change how we view ourselves, what we believe we are and what we are not, we cannot adopt the decisions and behaviors we spend so much time avoiding.”

Until we change our beliefs, we cannot sustainably change our behaviors.

What is that one thing that you are avoiding?