Reactive Or Responsive

“Between stimulus and response there is a space.  In that space is our power to choose our response.  In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”  Victor Frankl

 

The space is there between the provocation and our response.  We can utilize that space to choose a response rather than an automatic and reflexive reaction.

This is quite a transformative concept.  We don’t have to be a victim to our knee-jerk reaction, with the attitude of, “I’ve always reacted this way and I guess I always will.”  That’s the mindset of someone who’s resistant to change and would rather keep doing what they’ve been doing, no matter what the cost to them might be. Of course, many people who subscribe to this mentality look to the outside, the external circumstances, to justify their re-actions and even use that pointer finger to blame.  How much easier this is.  It takes us out of ourselves and puts it on the other.  The price can be very high when relationships are compromised or even ruined and shame and guilt live deep within, while anger has a good parking spot right at the corner of our lives.

I recently attended a presentation on the brain and mindfulness and one of the presenters said we need to strive to “respond wisely instead of react blindly.”   When we react in the heat of the moment in anger or stress, it’s as if we’re reacting blindly, just shooting off our emotion.

The fact that we can choose our response is huge.  We can get beyond what is seemingly embedded in us and respond to difficult emotions and situations from a different place.  That place is the space that we can give ourselves to respond wisely rather than react blindly.

How do we do this?  Instead of reacting we can:

Become aware of our high intensity feeling mode.  Check in with ourselves; take note and feel it.

Sit with those feelings, however uncomfortable they may be.  The feelings won’t kill us and they won’t last at that level.

Breathe in and out with long, deep breaths to physiologically calm our nervous system.

Step back from the situation at hand and check in with ourselves.

Reflect on what’s triggering the reaction.

Mindfully respond in a way that allows us to feel good about ourselves.

 

We get triggered all the time- by the crazy driver who honks the second the light turns green, by a comment that hints of criticism, by an assumption that ‘makes an ass out of you and me’, by personalizing things (one of the Four Agreements); and often times it’s those closest to us who know just the buttons to push to get us going, reacting all over the place and getting downright messy in our emotional spillage.

It’s about going inward as opposed to staying outwardly focused.  Are we reactive or responsive?  The choice is ours.  The space is ours.

 

Thanks for stopping by.