The difference between Reaction and Response - Day 438

I was doing shopping on the supermarket today and it was quite busy in there. The man behind me ran over my foot with his trolley and as I felt the pain, a surge of anger possessed me, as a reaction within myself. I snapped at the guy and yelled at him.

When I investigated the moment of Anger that came up with the pain, I realize that I missed a breath and allowed my preprogram design to kick in and within that, I acted out of reaction instead of a response.

 

Moving from a reaction to a response is a point I'm currently working on in terms of correcting my preprogram design of reaction and instead taking a moment to see the points clearly and with clarity, directing the point to its upmost potential. Directing the point to its fullest potential is what I define as 'response' in terms of seeing that there is a problem and only direct within stability, after looking at all the points and seeing the best path to walk that would eventually lead to the best for all outcome.   

 

So for instance within the example of someone running over me with his trolley in the supermarket - Obviously, snapping at him and reacting to the pain that I've experienced within myself is not acceptable. What would be beneficial in these situations is - firstly, take a moment and stabilize my human physical body. Here, one must take a breath and realize that the pain won't go away just because we reacted and yelled at the person; actually, the opposite will probably manifest - the snapping point is the Adrenalin that is produced from the source of the pain and with yelling at another, we actually perpetuating the adrenalin and making the pain worse.

The fascinating thing is that when a sharp pain is manifesting, making a specific sound within stabilizing the body may be supportive though it would be a constant sound, like ' hammmm' sound that is coming from our beingness as a decision we made within ourselves to support ourselves to stabilize the body.

 

Anyway, the second step is to assess the environment - In the example that I shared, I snapped at the guy for not considering his physical environment BUT - it was actually me who didn't consider my physical environment. The moment he ran over me, was the moment I saw LJ and Maite and I stopped for a moment to talk to them. I saw them coming towards me and I knew that I would stop for a moment and yet, I didn't let the guy behind me be aware of what I was aware that is going to happened. Meaning, I could have directed my environment by either signal LJ and Maite to move to the left so that we won't stop in the middle of the place where lots of traffic is taking place; or - I could let the guy behind me know that I'm going to stop for a moment and that he need to bypass me.

 

But let's say that LJ and Maite would not be around - in the case most likely that if the guy would have to run over me with his trolley, it would be because the guy was somewhere in his mind and didn't notice that I'm right in front of him - instead of yelling at him after the event, I could have talk to him and show him what is the consequences of being so much in the mind without considering the physical reality and if I would to do that, it would be a response rather than a reaction that would not support neither myself or the other being to actually learn from one's mistake and apply the correction in one's living application.

 

This is a very simple example of the difference between Reaction and Response. As time goes by, I will share more examples so that we can all learn from each other reactions and start moving to response to effectively direct ourselves and our environment in ways that would empower ourselves and others instead of diminishing ourselves and others.

 

Thanks