Responding Vs. Reacting?

I fully believe in the idea that we all have an equal opportunity to decide how we choose to respond to our experiences. If we choose to take this idea and make it a part of our lifestyle, we now have no one to blame for how we feel but ourselves. Our power lies in our ability to make a choice to either respond or react to the stimuli we experience. For shits and giggles, I like to call the stimuli we experience, life's "crunt." 

People who respond to "life's crunt" tend to have an optimistic outlook on all of their perceived "good and bad" experiences. They feel that they can learn and grow from each experience. For now we will call this a "love response". 

Now what does that mean for the times that we choose to react versus choosing to respond? When we choose to react to "life's crunt" we tend to have a perceived negative view of what we are experiencing. In some way or another the stimuli triggers a "reaction". So why does it matter if we react or respond? Let's first take a macro look at the words "react" and "respond". To react is a form of action, it is an emergence of urgency. To respond, is to be responsible, to not immediately take action but to consider the bigger picture before taking action. One is action without though, one is action with consideration to the variables at hand. For example, you are driving down the street and are waiting to take a right hand turn, but an elderly person is taking their sweet old time to cross that road, oh by the way you are late for work and already stressed out. Instead of considering that this person is elderly, and obviously slow for a reason you suddenly feel enraged and can't help but honk the damn horn to prove to the already inebriated elder that they are slowly crossing the road and its pissing you off.

This is what we call a reaction, you didn't choose to consider the variables of the situation. All of the anger you felt could have been reconciled if you would have considered the variables that were triggering you in the first place. Now, if we were to have been in that experience and stopped for just a second to realize that "well they are obviously old", "I'm already stressed because I'm late for work" and "traffic sucks" we could have made the responsible decision not act like enraged child who didn't get the cookies he wanted because he didn’t consider the actions of not finishing his carrots for dinner. At the end of the day, these small stressors build up to big problems that can lead to a debilitating life. So, the importance of responding vs reacting is A BIG ONE. The more stressed you are, the more your ability to make proper decisions get's thrown out the window. You are essentially mega-dosing yourself with cortisol and the human hormones that are designed to keep you safe by pushing you into fight or flight mode.  

There are a lot of reasons that we choose to react vs responding. We have been programmed to blame others, take shit personally, lie, cheat and a whole host of other man made psychiatric problems. The TV shows and movies we watched as kids and unfortunately let our kids watch, present false contradicting narratives that can drive a person fucking insane. Our subconscious mind just sucks up all of this programming and spits it back out to us as our reality and habits, thus causing us to act in ways that we don't understand.

That is why it is important that we begin to delve deep into our minds and begin making the conscious decision to respond to stimuli instead of reacting to it with preconceived notions that give us a false sense of self and shitty human experience.  

When we chose to react fearfully it triggers emotions within us. These emotions can then burn new habits into our brain and throughout our body. This can lead to dis-ease in the body, sickness, headaches, fatigue and other issues. The more we react fearfully the more we trigger these emotions and the more we sicken and hurt ourselves. The more we do that the deeper the habit gets burned into our brains and the more frequent we react to certain triggers. Soon enough certain triggers can be tied together and then you start to get in a real shit storm of all sorts of things triggering all sorts of pain, worry and suffering. Best of all it gets stuck not only in your head, but places in your body! Leading to stiff backs, neck pain, tight hips and all this jazz. Which leads to relying on medications and other "bullshit" ways to mitigate your pain and suffering.

The above problems emerge and wreck HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of people on our planet all of the time. Once again I don't blame them. I choose not to, because this world can be overwhelming. We are consistently fed fear, worry, and suffering by media, corporations and greedy motherfuckers who simply want to control the world for a reason so cosmic and out there that I cannot even fully make sense of it yet. But the reality is I can only control one thing, and that is how I CHOOSE to respond or react to life's "CRUNT".