Do you know that moment on a Sunday, when it gets quiet and the usual hamster wheel stops?
And something subtle creeps in.
Not a big crisis. Just a slight uneasiness. A restlessness in the body. A sense that something isn’t fully settled.
I notice how quickly we move away from that.
We pick up the phone. We plan the week. We distract ourselves, or we reframe the feeling into something more acceptable.
In other words: we avoid it.
Often not consciously. Often in very refined, socially accepted ways. But still, we leave the direct experience quite fast.
In Buddhist practice, there is a term that points in the opposite direction: non-avoidance.
At a simple level, it means not turning away from what is here. Not immediately fixing, explaining, or regulating the experience. Just staying in contact - with the sensation, the emotion, the tension.
I’m noticing how rare that is.
Not only in everyday life, but also in the executive teams I work with. A difficult dynamic enters the room and within seconds someone reframes it into optimism. Uncertainty appears and the conversation jumps prematurely into action mode. Tension becomes visible in people’s bodies, but nobody really stays with it long enough to ask what is actually happening here.
It looks like effectiveness.
But often, it’s avoidance in a more sophisticated form - one that is harder to detect precisely because it is rewarded.
And over time, something essential gets lost. Conversations flatten, decisions lose depth, and people sense that not everything can really be said, even if the culture keeps talking about openness.
What interests me more and more is that non-avoidance doesn’t stop at staying with discomfort.
If you stay - really stay - you begin to notice a more subtle movement. The almost constant impulse to interfere with what is happening. To adjust the experience, to position yourself, to shape reality so it fits your role, your identity, your sense of stability.
And here the meaning of non-avoidance deepens.
It is not only about allowing a feeling to be there. It is also about seeing this ongoing micro-management of experience - and, at least for a moment, not following it.
Not withdrawing, but also not controlling. Not passive, but not constantly intervening either.
Something becomes quieter there.
Less forcing. Less performance. You begin to see a bit more clearly what is actually happening - internally and in the room around you.
I’m not sure we fully see how much of what we call strength - in life and leadership - is built on very fast forms of avoidance.
And I wonder what might change if we stayed just a little longer before moving away.
Especially on a Sunday, when things become quiet again.
What appears in that silence before you reach for something else?