The space between a reaction and a response is just a matter of seconds. When someone gives you bad news, your body begins to react – the impulse is a choice between fight, flight, and freeze.
Give it a couple of seconds, though, and you’ve reached that magical space between stimulus and response. A few more seconds and you’ve reached the point where you begin to respond. You realize you have more choice than you initially thought and are aware of better choices every second. The problem isn’t that bad after all.
Once you get to response, you never want to react again. Why spend all that effort trying to undo a hasty reaction when you can invest a few extra seconds to respond? The process may take just a matter of seconds but the results can save you hours of unwanted pain.
Getting to response isn’t easy even if it takes just a few seconds. It’s a skill worth developing though; and the first step to developing the skill is to be aware that we want to develop it.
To response!
A Learning a Day 