I've listened to a lot of people in my life and have benefitted from hearing and understanding many of them. Listening is an excellent skill, one learns more listening than talking. I had an idea to do a little series of posts about things I've heard people say and which I've taken away, thought over and applied to my life. I'll keep these posts quite short but hope someone reads something they can fit into their own life. Here goes.
Respond or react
When things happen to us in life we have choices to make with two of them being to react or respond; there's a subtle difference and it's important to know what that is and which to use and when.
I believe a wise person responds more readily than reacts because being reactionary can often mean actions are not thought through or planned and that can lead to more trouble down the road. A response is something that's often calculated and measured meaning it's more likely to be of greater benefit. A clearly thought-through response is often made more calmly and with a cool head and when that response is heavy, drastic or unforgiving it's at least coming from a place of consideration so is more likely to be appropriate. When I was a kid my father suggested I count to ten before I act and it used to annoy me when he said it, but later I came to understand he was telling me to weigh and measure my actions prior to proceeding to deploy and it's worked well for me.
I have the ability for decisiveness and can be heavy-handed when I need to be (I've dropped Thor's hammer on a few heads I guess) but I work towards making sure it's a calculated and measured decision prior to doing it. Yeah, I've reacted too, I'm human after all, and that's ok...none of us are perfect.
Design and create your ideal life, tomorrow isn't promised - galenkp
[Original and AI free]
Image(s) in this post are my own
Your father was a smart man and you picked up on that pearl of wisdom. Sometimes it's a difficult thing to put into practice though lol.
I've not always followed good advice, I think many could say the same. Sometimes we have to learn by trial, error and experience I guess.
Well damn, I upvoted my own post after we just talked about that...not only that but I responded to my own comment, too. damnit lol
Fucken spazz! 🤣
That's about what I said 😂
Haha, spazzy minds think alike.
Yep, I probably failed more than I prevailed in my earlier days. Pretty laid back now, though it still could happen lol
I think the best thing I've ever heard about response vs react is part of something that came out of one of my favourite shows, Babylon 5. "Never start a fight, but always finish it."
I am not even sure if it came out of that show as original text or is an ages old adage, but I think about it every time I feel my self careening towards a reaction instead of a response.
Yep, I think it's strange that many people start fights, complexities, issues and the like and yet do not know how to end them through affirmative action. It's a risky move especially when the others involved know how to finish such things decisively.
I have never started a fight, or needed to finish one. , so I count myself lucky.
(And undefeated)
Undefeated is a good brag. Lol.
Excellent message. It is true in these situations we always respond before reacting and as you say it happens to me very often sometimes I react very sharply and then I regret not having measured my words. That's why now I think before I act and say something that affects others. Regards
That sounds like a good course of action, have you found it makes a positive difference to your relationships and life in general and if so why.
It is really positive to realize the difference between the two and it is very important to react before acting in order not to harm anyone with bad words.
I like to think of it as acknowledging that we have impulses. Those impulses are quite emotion-based and perhaps more automatic rooted in basic survival mode.
Then, we have the chance to activate our intelligence and wisdom, takin our impulses into consideration but choosing how to respond. As you put it, responding vs reacting.
I think it is silly when some people, mostly guys, claim they think logically and not emotionally. Absolute bullshit as we are emotional beings too. We can just choose to respond more logically than react emotionally.
I think you do develop habits to avoid being hasty and reactive as you get older and wiser. Personal evolution!
Pretty well thought out and written, I certainly don't disagree. Thanks for adding your viewpoint to the conversation.
That's what we are here for!
usually, we respond, i mean you elaborate, you come up with conclusions and respod, it's the civil way to handle things...however sometimes you are just so full, so stressed that you react on impulse... that should not be the norm but an exception
You say "you" a lot however I'm going to assume you are not actually referring to "me" in your comment, just people in general?
Yeah people in general not pointing personally to you... Here we use the "you" to refer to general speaking.
To describe a series of actions of a generic person I got no idea how to do without using a lot of you 😅
Fair enough, I thought it might be something like that.
The instinctual reaction to everything is definitely gaining ground on the response. There are other reactions though, too. Many martial arts train calmness while reacting. It's not a response, it's not thinking about it in that sense, but rather muscle memory reacting swiftly and decisively. A responsive reaction, one could say, as it was trained thousand of times.
There once was an owl who sat on the same tree branch every night and with large intelligent eyes intently watched the world that surrounded it.
Sometimes it would see other animals, other times just leaves swaying in the wind that would blow through on wintery nights, little bugs flying and crawling. The owl was content and happy, it didn't think about wanting more than it had and felt happy and fulfilled. Each night it thought about what its life might be like if the tree wasn't there and it gave thanks to the sturdy plant that gave it such a good view; and in the morning it flew away to it's home, a hole in a tree trunk a short fly away and slept knowing its tree and branch would be there tomorrow.
One night, soon after flying to its branch, the owl the owl felt strange, heavy as if a great weight bore down on it, and then it was falling, tumbling downward to the ground unable to arrest its fall, wings ineffective. It struck the ground and never thought another thing. It was dead.
The next day the owls' eyes were eaten away, ants making short work of those soft, liquid orbs, and next they began eating away the owls brain and the soft tissues and muscles inside its body and only a few short days later nothing was left of the owl but feathers that eventually blew away in the wind.
One of those ants was different to the others, slightly lighter in colour and smaller than the rest, and it had a habit of radical thought, strange ideas formulating in its tiny brain. It would wander away from the other ants then turn back and look at them, the rest of the colony working away all controlled by a collective mind and it would think to itself, why?
It was during one those moments when it walked up onto on a leaf that had fallen from the owls' tree and, in some strange twist of fate or destiny, the wind blew at just that moment carrying the leaf on its invisible tendrils upward and into the air where it floated and fluttered towards the river that ran deep and wide just beyond the meadow through the poplar trees and spruce. It flew and tumbled then fell, the wind a spent force, and into the river the leaf fell, the ant with it.
Downstream it floated, picking up speed as it moved towards the rapids, and the ant wondered what forces carried it along, how it was moving so fast. The ant didn't know, it's limited experience hadn't prepared it for this event but the radical thinking part of its brain told it that the adventure would lead it to become something it never thought it could be so it gripped more tightly with its little feet and thought how fortunate it was that fate had brought such an opportunity...but then a frog spotted it and with a swift motion its tongue flicked out towards the ant in a bid to capture and eat it. The frog missed but disrupted the leaf which turned over in the water dumping the ant into the fast-flowing rapids.
They say drowning is peaceful but the ant didn't find it that way, it was agony, fear and desperation.
The ant wasn't missed at the colony, no one thought of it, no one wondered; none of the other ants knew it's tiny dead body was carried downriver, over the water fall and into a clear, still pool at the bottom.
There, a young lady bathed. A tiny bikini barely covered her body which glistened with water droplets that ran off her curves. She exited the water gracefully and walked along the small sandy beach to her towel, bent to pick it up and her long golden hair fell forward as she did. She straightened, brushed her hair away from her face tilting her head to the right as she did and pressing the towel to her face to dry it. As she did, she noticed a tiny black speck on her shoulder and moved to flick it off, the dead ant.
It was as irrelevant as your initial comment was to me, that's the point you're missing.