“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