“Do not deny the classical approach, simply as a reaction, or you will have created another pattern and trapped yourself there.”
― Bruce Lee, Tao of Jeet Kune Do
It’s not the thing — e.g. wrong speech, a tragedy, the extant situation — that gets us into trouble. It’s how we choose to respond that determines (our) life.
And I missed this for a long time. No, seriously. I missed it.
I thought that as long as I understood the link between my thoughts/feelings that I could act more mindfully.
But it’s not that easy when you’ve been conditioned to act a certain way.
In my case, there was a lot of anger. P*ss me off and I had a standard response.
Now?
It’s work in progress. I can feel the emotion rising; I can hear myself talking negatively; and then.
And then I choose how to respond.
I’ve discovered that sometimes it’s best to say nothing — particularly around my children. It’s like the proverbial petrol on the fire.
I suppose this is no different to the idea of stimulus-pause-response.
What about you?
Do you have a stock-in-trade response? If it’s one that you don’t like, then perhaps now is the time to mindfully practice a different one.
Blessings.
Julian