Towards or away from immediately brings to mind moments when I respond to discomfort.

Are my actions action moving towards what I want or away from something I don’t want?

Honestly, it seems they are both. I have avoided difficult conversations for most of my life because I am moving away from confrontation. That moving away from was two-fold, I avoided the difficult conversation AND I did not address the reason the conversation had to happen in the first place. I never thought of moving towards what I did want – it was all about getting a far away from confrontation as fast as I could.

RUN DEANNA RUN!

I had a great dog, Maximillian, he was a funky little basset hound black lab mix and I would take him into the field next to my parents house and yell Run Maxi Run! And he would take off as fast as his odd little basset hound on a full grown lab legs could carry him around and around in circles in the field until he was completely exhausted.

That is was I was doing when moving away from those difficult moments – I was running around and around in circles until I was exhausted. Why? Because that moment or thing that created the need for  the conversation never resolved because I always ran from it, and, it followed me.  If you or your clients are not in sustainable change, the difficult moment comes back. Yes, I avoided a conversation that may have created hurt feelings or negative emotion in the moment – but ultimately the problem would reoccur and it then became harder to run from.

If I move towards resolution and if I have the conversation right away, and don’t get in to move away from mode, often the difficult conversation goes really well, and ends in positive result. What I want is, growth, sense of togetherness, harmony and truth, those are all hard places to reach when you are in move away from mindset. When I change that mindset to moving towards what I want – suddenly space opens for the conversation to happen in an entirely new way, where everyone wins in some capacity.

What are you running away from?

Coach Deanna