Why Avoiding Small Things Makes Life Difficult
We all avoid things. The uncomfortable conversation. The phone call we don't want to make. Speaking up in a meeting when we're not completely sure of the answer. Taking on something new where we might fail. Most of these decisions seem harmless, and in the moment they can actually feel good. You decide not to make the call and immediately feel a little less stressed. You postpone the conversation and feel relieved. That relief is exactly why avoidance can become so powerful. Your brain pays attention to what makes discomfort disappear, and when avoiding something brings relief, it learns, “That worked. Do it again.” In psychology, this is called negative reinforcement.
Here is why that matters. Your brain is constantly predicting what is safe, difficult, or threatening based partly on what happened before. When you continually avoid something uncomfortable, you don't give your brain the opportunity to discover that you could probably handle it. Consider a leader who dreads giving difficult feedback. Every time she postpones the conversation, her anxiety drops, reinforcing the avoidance. But she also misses the experience of having the conversation, surviving the discomfort, and discovering that she can manage it. Over time, the problem isn't just that she has avoided a few difficult conversations. Her brain has been practicing avoidance rather than learning how to navigate discomfort.
The good news is that learning can work in the other direction. You don't need to suddenly become fearless or force yourself into overwhelming situations. Start with small, manageable actions. Ask the question you normally keep to yourself. Send the email you've been rewriting all morning. Speak up when you disagree. Have the conversation you have been postponing. Research from psychology on exposure and avoidance suggests that safely approaching uncomfortable situations can create new learning. Your brain gets evidence that the situation may not be as threatening as predicted and, just as importantly, that you are capable of handling the discomfort.
This is why the small things you avoid can matter. You aren't simply deciding whether to make a phone call or have a conversation. Repeated over time, you may be teaching yourself what to do when something feels uncomfortable. Avoidance teaches you to escape the feeling; approaching manageable challenges gives you the opportunity to learn that you can handle it. So the next time you find yourself backing away from something, ask yourself why: Is this genuinely not worth doing, or am I simply trying to make the discomfort disappear? What feels like a tiny decision today may be training how you respond to much bigger challenges tomorrow.
The small Avoidances That Make You Weaker, Alice Boyes. Psychology Today, September/October 2026
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