A Thought Experience — Practice responding over reacting

Taking the moments and day-to-day events of everyday life where we might normally be an automatic reaction. Instead turning them into choices in how we might want to respond. 

This subtle, yet very significant difference between being at choice verses being a reaction provides radically different outcomes. 

When you think about it, we routinely go about most of our day as an automatic reactor to things, events and moments. We have to given how much information is constantly coming towards us. Without this ability we’d be completely overwhelmed the moment we wake up. To survive we’ve evolved super efficient means of managing payloads of stimuli and information by learning to ignore most of it (where they pose no threat) or by reacting automatically. 

The problem arises when these automatic reactions become too efficient and encompassing, dampening our self-awareness and encroaching into important areas of our lives such as relationships. In these scenarios, how conscious are we really? 

Recently I’ve begun to wonder this. 

If most of my day is spent automatically reacting to predictable events, how aware, alive or conscious am I really? Throughout how much of my day am I actually choosing my responses verses having them selected for me by automatic reactions?

What if instead, like a ball, I practiced catching (ie, noticing) the event in the moment? And like a ball about to be automatically passed to a default reaction, I intercept it, changing its direction of travel and changing the outcome based on my chosen response? Instead of reflexively doing what I might normally do as a reaction, I could - figuratively speaking - catch the ball, look at my surroundings and then choose how to respond. Consciously. How might my day go instead? How might my experiences be? 

I have been practicing. A lot in the last few days. Let me tell you about it. 

First off, it’s not been easy. In fact it’s been damn hard. My first attempts at interception were complete failures: the ball continually getting away as reaction, with the resultant outcomes ensuing. Me only noticing the fact after the event. The temptation here was to get annoyed with myself for failing to catch the opportunity in time before it got away from me. At this point I nearly gave up, justifying to myself that it’s too hard, the reflex as ball moving too fast: “Oh, there it goes again. Another reaction has gotten away. I’ve said those harsh words or snapped at the children before catching myself doing it.” Worse, I notice myself reacting in disappointment to my reaction and making myself wrong for that too! 

But noticing the failure was actually the first step: A bit of learned awareness in failing. 

Time to reorientate myself. The next day I decided to give myself permission to make mistakes. To fumble the ball as it were and not expect to intercept the moment of reflex every time. I realised that just noticing the balls passing in front of me was itself a step up in self-awareness. A big step up. So I lowered my expectations. I allowed myself to slow down. 

As I did this I noticed more. In slowing myself down, so did the game — so did life. This was a breakthrough. By slowing down I was able to see, notice and experience more. Metaphorically speaking, the balls passing in front of me were slowing down too. I was becoming more conscious. 

To the next day: I slow down, I notice the events happening around me more clearly. I notice myself noticing them. I am now in a far better position to choose a response over being a reaction to an event. I manage to catch one or two and choose. 

Case in point: One of my kids did something I’d normally immediately react to and speak out harshly to them as a correction. This creates the predictable outcome of a resentful response, followed in turn by an escalation of emotion and some shouting. Not what either of us want. 

This time, catching the moment of the event and intercepting it I took the time to pause and notice myself about to react. Instead I took the ‘ball’ — the moment I’d just caught. Looking around me at the situation I was consciously taking in more information and importantly, the context of the event. 

Instead of my usual reaction of anger and harsh words of correction, I asked “Why?” I was curious to understand. The resulting outcome was very different: A rational conversation between two people where an agreement was reached based on a negotiation. 

Now sure, this all took longer. The difference between a few milliseconds of a reaction and the 10-12 seconds of the interception of the event, consideration of the context and selection of a response. Time efficient? No, definitely not by that measure of comparison. But by zooming out to a wider view of the whole interaction and of the relationship itself between two people, it was a far more valuable outcome. 

In summary

  • Reaction -> arguing/shouting -> deterioration of relationship. 

  • Caught event & considered response -> rational negotiation-> improved relationship. 

Clunky and awkward? Yes. Definitely. Most things are when you’re learning and practicing them. Valuable and more effective? By measure of quality of interaction and relationship, yes. 

Will this approach become more coordinated and efficient with practice? Absolutely. Learning to intercepts balls — catching a moment and choosing a response over automatically reacting — is a practice in becoming more conscious, more self-aware and ‘response-able’. 

A long way still to go, but this is a practice worth persisting with I feel.

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