Yesterday was a great day! You were happy!
Today sucks...big time. What changed?
It is empowering to know that living a life of Up or Getting Up (But Never Down) is a choice that we make on a daily basis. Let's take a simple example: Yesterday was a great day. You were happy. You were excited for life. You were energized. You smiled at the people you passed in the halls. It was a really good day! Today, however, sucks. Big time. You're in a bad mood. Nothing seems to be going right. You are not happy. You are definitely not energized or, if you are, it is a very negative energy. What changed? Barring some catastrophic event that happened overnight, not much changes in our lives from day to day. The biggest difference between yesterday and today ultimately boils down to choices I am making on some level. I DECIDE to allow my child's bad mood to affect my mood. I DECIDE that spilling coffee on my shirt after I am already dressed for work is going to impact (negatively) the rest of my day. I am choosing my attitude and I am choosing how I am going to respond (or react) to the things that are occurring in my life.
The concept of responding versus reacting is an interesting one and, once you have the concept clarified for yourself, it becomes a powerful force in leading a positive, joyful, more productive life. To help illustrate the difference between responding and reacting, let's take a visit to the doctor. You go see your doctor for a follow-up appointment. When the doctor walks in they make one of the following statements:
- Your body is responding to the medication.
- Your body is reacting to the medication.
Which of those two would you rather hear? Personally, I would rather hear that my body is responding instead of reacting!
When we react to something, our ensuing actions tend to be instinctive. We might react (usually in a negative way) to a driver who cuts us off on the way to work, or to someone who is rude or obnoxious, or even to someone who cuts in line in front of you when you have been waiting in that line for a ridiculously long time.
Conversely, when we respond to something, we are more purposeful in our ensuing actions. Responding is a result of thinking things through. We take the time to think (even if just for a moment) about the potential impact of what we are about to say or do. Therein lies the challenge for many people. Responding takes an element of time and a moment of control. Too many times people just react...immediately, instead of taking a breath and staying in control.
Here are two pieces of good news:
1). We can teach ourselves to minimize the times when we just react. Self-control is a behavior and behaviors are learnable. By raising our own level of consciousness around responding versus reacting, we can be more purposeful in our responses when moments arise in which we would normally have just reacted. When someone cuts me off on the road, instead of reacting in a negative way, I can choose to slow down, let them move on ahead and out of my life, and then be happy I don't have the same stress in my life that they obviously have in theirs!
2). While reacting tends to come from a more subconscious level (think fight or flight), we can program, or train, ourselves to react in certain ways. The military has been doing this with our troops for decades. Certain elements of basic training are performed over and over again so that in the heat of battle, when fight or flight can be very strong, the instinct is to react in the specific way they were trained. In our pursuit of a life of being Up or Getting Up (But Never Down), when we practice responding in positive ways (#1 above), we are actually programming ourselves to instinctively react positively when those situations arise.
Every morning we have the chance to decide our attitude towards the day ahead of us. Every encounter we have with anyone else is an opportunity to decide whether I am going to react or respond. When we choose to respond in a positive way, we not only contribute to our own life of being Up or Getting Up, but we are also positively impacting others and contributing to their life, too!
Up or Getting Up Actions to Take:
- Raise your level of awareness of when you react and the situations that trigger you to react (while driving, encounters with certain individuals, etc)
- Think through a better way to respond when the next trigger situation arises. You can even rehearse this response in your head to begin reprogramming your reactions
- Work towards pausing a moment before reacting to anything that instinctively triggers a negative reaction. This moment of hesitation will help you evaluate better ways to respond, reduce stress, and keep things positive.
What are your best techniques for not reacting negatively? Please share in the comments below.