Don’t react – respond. Notice your triggers and allow yourself to neutralize before you take action. Pretty much the opposite of what you see here! 🙂
“With the modern world having become so frantic, it is easy to become as frenetic as the world around us. The problem with that, though, is that without calm, there is no wisdom, no impulse control and no real peace of mind. We’re more likely to become emotionally reactive and unclear in our thinking.
Without deep peace of mind, we cannot be the people we are capable of being, and we cannot live the lives we are capable of living.” – Marianne Williamson
My husband, Greg, and I both worked from home last Friday.
Around 3 PM, I left in Greg’s car to go pick up my special needs cat, Little Melon, from his dental procedure.
But I didn’t get far.
What I thought was putting the car in reverse was actually first gear and then boom, I hit my car with my husband’s car. In the carport.
Immediately and naturally, I was physically shaken.
My hands started to shake, I felt light-headed and like my arms and legs were hollow.
I quickly went inside the house.
‘I hit my car. I hit my car with your car,’ I told Greg.
‘Why?’ he asked calmly. (strange question if you ask me! :))
‘I don’t know. There’s just a little damage. Come look,’ I said.
‘I’m about to get a call. Go ahead and go,‘ he said, knowing our little cat child was waiting for me.
I walked outside and just stood there.
Less than a minute later, Greg came out with the phone to his ear on his call and waved his hand, signaling, ‘Go. Go. It’s OK.’
I non-verbally signaled back, ‘You go back inside. Let me be.‘
After 25 years of being in relationship, (yes, I met my husband when I was 12), we know our signs.
But even more important, I know my signs.
There is no way in hell I was getting back in that car so shaken up. My hands were still jittery. I felt moderately disoriented.
I waited. I breathed. I walked around the neighborhood.
I allowed myself to neutralize before doing anything.
Even though I was supposed to be at the vet by 3:15.
Even though I needed to get home by a certain time because we needed to purchase a new washing machine that night because I had an all-day training that weekend (the washer died the previous week – 7+ loads on our bedroom floor).
Even though Greg had told me it was OK for me to go.
There was a time in my life when I would have just taken one breath, gotten in the car, “pulled myself together,” and left to complete my responsibilities because people were waiting, even if I was wound up or putting myself in jeopardy.
“I’ll be fine,” is what I would tell my old self.
But not anymore. I use mindful awareness to accept what is happening, observe my reactions, and then pause to make a discerned, wise choice.
You can tell my husband practices too by his non-reaction to hearing I just hit my car with his less-than-one-year-old-car.
The discerned wise choice is called right action.
This is the Everyday Mindfulness practice to live by…Respond, Don’t React.
You and the world will be a much more peaceful place with this practice.
Yes, responding – aka right action – is a practice that never ends.
Here are 5 steps to practice right action – a wise response:
- Notice and become intimately aware of your physical and emotional triggers (hot, shaky, angry, anxious, fearful, tense, jaw clenching, holding your breath, squinty eyes, qweezy, chest pounding).
- Fully accept your experience, even if it is negative. Embrace and welcome the experience. Don’t try to push it away. Notice I didn’t try to make the accident not happen, cover it up, or beat myself up over making a mistake or by being shaken up.
- Pause. Allow yourself to neutralize. This means don’t do anything until you are in your right mind and right body. This could take two minutes, two hours, two months, two years, or two life times. Neutralize.
- Sit with the discomfort of doing no-thing. Your ego will not like this – it wants to point blame, express vehement emotions, make things right, create stories, and drama. Doing no-thing is where the juice is to make new neural pathways for positive change. What fires together, wires together.
- Discern and if appropriate, take action. What action will support my and others highest good in this situation? What action honors my values? You discern and take action only after you have neutralized.
The time to react is when there is a real emergency – a fire, a severed limb, fleeing from a wild boar.
The time to react is NOT when you receive a negative review from your boss, a criticism from your partner, a request from your child, or when life does not go as planned.
These are your opportunities to respond. To demonstrate deep peace of mind and be the change you wish to see in the world, even if those around you are going cray cray.
Allow yourself to neutralize.
This friend, is Everyday Mindfulness.
