Saying something: Part Five - Respond or react

I've listened to a lot of people in my life and have benefitted from hearing and understanding many of them. Listening is an excellent skill, one learns more listening than talking. I had an idea to do a little series of posts about things I've heard people say and which I've taken away, thought over and applied to my life. I'll keep these posts quite short but hope someone reads something they can fit into their own life. Here goes.

Respond or react

When things happen to us in life we have choices to make with two of them being to react or respond; there's a subtle difference and it's important to know what that is and which to use and when.

I believe a wise person responds more readily than reacts because being reactionary can often mean actions are not thought through or planned and that can lead to more trouble down the road. A response is something that's often calculated and measured meaning it's more likely to be of greater benefit. A clearly thought-through response is often made more calmly and with a cool head and when that response is heavy, drastic or unforgiving it's at least coming from a place of consideration so is more likely to be appropriate. When I was a kid my father suggested I count to ten before I act and it used to annoy me when he said it, but later I came to understand he was telling me to weigh and measure my actions prior to proceeding to deploy and it's worked well for me.

I have the ability for decisiveness and can be heavy-handed when I need to be (I've dropped Thor's hammer on a few heads I guess) but I work towards making sure it's a calculated and measured decision prior to doing it. Yeah, I've reacted too, I'm human after all, and that's ok...none of us are perfect.