When u expected events occur, most people go down one of two roads: they either react or respond.
Responding, is a spin off from the word responsibility, it is considerate and deliberate. Reacting on the other hand, literally means to meet one action with another. It is immediate and rash.
Responses tend to goes like this: when something happens, you pause, process, and plan. Then you proceed.
Reactions go: Something happens, and you panic. Then you proceed.
Responding is slow and reaction is quick. Responding creates more space between the event and what you do or don’t do with it. In that space, you give your immediate emotions some room to breathe, and better understand what is happening, make a plan using the most evolved part of your brain, and then move forward accordingly.
Responding is harder than reacting. It takes more time and effort, and it often requires letting a strong itch -the yearning to immediately do something, anything, about whatever just happened be there without scratching it. But, like most things responding requires effort. You rarely regret deliberately responding to a challenging situation. But you often regret automatically reaching to one.
It’s always better to respond than to react because reacting can get us into trouble. Whether it is unexpected traffic, a meeting that didn’t go as planned, a pet having diarrhea when you’re rushing out the door, or something more significant there is something called the 4 P’s that can get you out of reacting and into responding.
After years of my life reacting instead of responding I learned about this practice and it has made my life easier and a whole lot more peaceful.
1. Pause: Take a deep breath or two and gather your thoughts.
2. Process: Label the emotions you are feeling. Tell yourself, this is what is happening right now, I’m doing the best I can
3. Plan: Now that you have collected yourself, make a plan for what you want to do going forward. Figure out what resources and skills you can bring to the situation at hand.
4. Proceed: Only then take action and proceed.
What happens when you practice responding instead of reacting you begin you will not only make better decisions but you also start to experience a part of yourself that is not so susceptible to change, at least not in the way you usually experience it. It’s the part of you that pauses, processes, plans, and proceeds.
When you react to a situation you become a part of it. Going from one reaction to the next becomes an emotional roller coaster. When you respond to a situation, however, you put a few degrees of freedom between a deeper and more stable sense of yourself and the ever-changing current in your life.
From Pity to Praise 