Reaction Verses Response

Will you choose to be Negative or Positive? We can all be reactive, but what does it take to wait & pause so we can take a minute and choose our response. When you react, it usually comes from our defensive emotions and one loses control. The situation then becomes negative instead of positive.

Here are two examples I encountered this week:

I was walking in a Publix parking lot and two cars were leaning on their horns yelling about the other moving their car. I walked in between and said “there is enough war in this world, please be peaceful and move on”. A very old gentleman started screaming at me defending his emotion to be right. While shopping, he found me and started explaining himself. I said, “In this world today, is it really so important to be angry or right about it? He stopped, thought about it, smiled & thanked me. His whole demeanor changed as he walked around the store smiling.

The Lesson: Being Positive & Letting go can feel so good! Being negative & righteous makes you feel angry. So instead of allowing a situation to lead to a negative reaction, you can learn to be positive and make a situation better – not worse.

I went to the dollar store to get party plates and cups. Of course I did not grab a cart. I had a bunch of decorations & balloons over flowing from my arms. As I approached the register I started dropping a few things. The lady in front of me who had only two items insisted I go ahead of her. I had a total of 27 items, LOL. She and her daughter were so sweet! They asked whose birthday it was, how old will she be and said what fun it will be! She was positive, excited& delighted for me.

The Lesson: When you choose to be positive, not only will you feel better, you will also cause others to feel better too. Just think how life as we know it would be, if we all practiced this. You can go to bed at night feeling grateful for having a pleasant day filled with compassion or you can go to bed resenting your day & the people in it. Don’t sweat the small stuff!