Stop reacting. Start responding.
Why you should not “let it go” to build resilience
My co-worker Kristoff jumps into my office and starts raging about the delay of our app. All I reply is: “Interesting” and I pause. Silence always works. The rage disappears. The calm returns and we continue to discuss the delay in a neutral manner. This is resilience and it was mindfulness who taught me this.
I schedule my day with all the important tasks I should be working on, but there are always urgent tasks popping up. Stephen Covey would tell me now that I should focus on what’s important . Following his advice, I learned that urgent stuff turns into a nightmare if I am not dealing with it right away. Then ‘urgent’ becomes ‘important’.
If you are dealing with a tough situation, the last thing you want to hear is that you should let it go.
To deal with both important and urgent, I need resilience. I know, ‘resilience’ is one of those words that are easily said but that are much harder brought into practice. It’s like replying Kristoff that he should let it go. But, then I am just ignoring his pain and struggles. If you are dealing with a tough situation, the last thing you want to hear is that you should let it go. Maybe that works for Queen Elsa from Arendelle, but that’s a fairy tale from a Disney movie. That’s not my reality (except every day around 7pm when reading bedtime stories for my daughters).
The real meditation practice starts the moment that I leave my meditation cushion.
Much has been written about mindfulness and how it helps to build resilience at work. I practice meditation a few times a week. Often not longer than 15 minutes. Sometimes only 3 minutes. Now that’s not what mindfulness practice is about. The real practice starts the moment that I leave my meditation cushion. So, how do I translate that meditation practice to the real world and build resilience? Therefore I need to explain what I learned from my mindfulness teacher Edel Maex on the difference between ‘reacting’ and ‘responding’.
There is a huge difference between reacting and responding.
When you react, you are automatically acting on something that happened. This is very different from responding. When you respond, you are applying mindfulness to the situation. You consciously pause and notice any emotions or physical sensations (like your breath). Only thereafter you will act. Even if that pause lasts only half a second, you will act completely different, and so will the result of your response be.
Let me give an example. I go totally crazy when encountering rude drivers in traffic. I hate it when a car starts tailgating in the left lane of the highway. I can react by staying in the left lane, pushing my brake a little or spraying my windscreen. Or, I can notice my breath, feel my anger and accept there is nothing I can do besides moving to the right lane. I am letting the leadfoot literally go. That’s responding to the situation.
Deferring my judgment helps me to respond instead of reacting.
I have no idea why this driver is tailgating. Maybe it’s a jerk. Maybe he’s unemployed and risks missing his first interview in months. Or maybe his pregnant wife is on the back seat and her water has broken. These are all interesting thoughts created by my brain, but I simply don’t know. That’s why I defer my judgment and that helps me to respond properly. That does not mean that I am not judging at all. When I see him passing by, staring at his pointing middle-finger, I can still consider him a jerk.
Depicting a thought or situation as “interesting” is my way of “let it go”.
The important thing is learning how to deal with “not knowing”. There is so much that we do not know. Still, our brain seems programmed to make all the time assumptions, generate associations, create silly thoughts… There is nothing to be ashamed about that. That happens to all of us. When my mind is going in overdrive with thoughts, I call them “interesting”. I am not pushing those thoughts back. They have the right to exist, but they cannot force me to change my behavior, my feelings or my thinking. Depicting a thought or a situation as “interesting” creates free space in my brain. It is my way of “letting it go”.
We need those little pauses to reflect and to feel so we can build and re-build resilience.
Going back to the office situation with Kristoff, I am not only using the word “interesting” in my thoughts. I also use it in conversations with my co-workers, friends or children. “Interesting” can mean a lot — both positive and negative — but it essentially shows my intention to listen. Especially when there are heavy emotions, reacting with a judgment can be very tricky. I learned that we need those little pauses to reflect and feel so we can build and re-build resilience.
Mindfulness is not for softies; it’s looking into the eyes of big trouble.
Some consider mindfulness as a New Age-type thing for fainthearted people. Believe me, it is not. It takes a lot of courage to embrace uncertainty and emotions. Mindfulness is about looking into the eyes of big trouble. If I want to remain resilient, I can only deal with uncertainty or emotions by being kind to myself and by deferring my judgment. And that’s why I call things constantly “interesting”. Interesting, isn’t it?
