Monday, Nov 1, 2010Do You React or Respond?

Do you react or respond to a uncomfortable situations?

Have you ever observed a scenario and arrived at a decision about it only to discover you were completely wrong in your assessment? Did your reactive behavior get you into trouble?

My assistant received a nasty letter from her neighbor accusing her of eavesdropping in on a private conversation and then spreading malicious gossip about the neighbor throughout the neighborhood. My assistant assured her she wasn’t the guilty party. It turned out that the letter writer had a boyfriend who blabbed the news throughout the neighborhood and wasn’t courageous enough to tell her as she wrote the nasty letter to my assistant.

This poor lady couldn’t begin to comprehend that her own boyfriend would have spilled the beans. It had to have been a nosey neighbor, right?

Wrong! The accusatory letter was written out of beliefs and emotions running rampant. The situation itself did not produce the beliefs and the accusations in that letter. The beliefs caused the thinking inside the letter writer, and the thinking created emotions, which turned into words and became reactive behavior.

As the story continues, my assistant, knowing full well she was not guilty as accused, spoke face to face with her neighbor and told her she can’t even hear phone conversations from her property, let alone spend time listening in on other people’s conversations. And then she forgave her neighbor for what had been written in the letter.

Maturity seems to be a long time coming for some of us. Our life itself is a school of learning how to cope with situations. Do we react or respond? In this case, reacting is the accusatory letter writing and the responding behavior is the courageous face-to-face communication.

We’ve all seen young people with reactive behavior: you push, I shove. You yell, I yell back. You accuse, I accuse back. You lie, I’ve got a bigger one to tell. This reactionary and impulsive behavior is immature. Once we become aware that we are reacting, we can decide not to react any longer, but to discover a more mature way – and that would be responding.

No one is free from stressful, anxious, or depressing situations, so let’s look at a way to respond with some maturity when they happen. Let’s call this the STR method: Stop; Think; Respond. If you are anxious about a bigger than normal bill that just arrived in today’s mail, STR. Stop for a moment and reflect on what just happened (I am sitting on my couch with today’s mail in my lap and I just opened a bigger than big bill from the Electric Company.) Now, Think “I’m surprised at this amount. I wonder why it’s so big? Could the meter have a problem?”  And lastly, Respond: “I’ll call the Electric Company tomorrow and find out what could be the problem.”

This sure beats the wailing and gnashing of teeth that reacting might bring, don’t you think? You need to start asking yourself: Do I react or respond?