Dec 05 2015
Your Reaction? Your Response?
Are You Reacting
. . . or Responding?
When you make it a habit to choose to respond to problem people and problem situations instead of choosing to react, guess what happens?
- You eliminate all possibility of ever over-reacting, and that’s a good thing if you own, operate, or manage a business of any kind.
- It’s also a good thing if you are working your way up the career ladder or committed to creating an aura of professionalism, of peace and calm around your personal and work relationships, your friendships, your family.
- It even increases your odds of preventing accidents, in addition to enhancing your personal performance, and overall health.
Unless you’re in an emergency situation, a calm and thoughtful response solves more problems more effectively than a frazzled or angry reaction. And you already know that choosing calm and thoughtful over frazzled and angry also helps ensure better and longer-lasting health.
Stop reading this right now, and close your eyes while you take a deep breath or two, and pay particular attention to the fact that it slows your heartbeat, helps you collect your thoughts, and increase your sense of self-control.
Go ahead. Treat yourself for ten or fifteen or thirty seconds. You might surprise yourself. Go on; I’ll wait.
So now that you’ve jetted your self down a notch, do you feel or think any differently than you did ten sentences ago? Three or four breaths ago? And what does this post make you think about for yourself that you’ve either not been aware of before, or that you have gotten lazy about?
As today’s world swirls, it’s easy to simply forget how important the distinction is between reacting and responding and how rewarding it can be for you to take more deep breaths more often.
The bottom line? Your behavior –your words and actions– is always your choice. Your choice may not always be a conscious one and it could be one that’s the result of a choice you made long ago that’s come full circle to stir up your anxieties. But recognize it for what it is . . . you can choose to make things easy on yourself, or you can choose to make them hard on yourself. Why would you want to choose unproductive upset over productive calm? And, yes, you can choose courage!
More conscious choices come from more conscious awareness. There are many mental and physical tools available to trigger responsive choices. Deep breathing is one of these. Yoga is another. Regular exercise, visualization (imagining/projecting/”seeing yourself” achieve a task or solve a problem before actually responding), are two others. Having goals that are specific, realistic, flexible, due-dated, and in writing can also help you steer yourself in high productivity directions.
Don’t just think about all this. Try it!
Keep your head cool and your feet warm
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