My reaction to negative news is not exactly “zen.” I’m self-aware enough to know that a negative reaction to a negative situation is not helpful, to say the least.
When I’m faced with a stressful situation, I respond. This, according to mental health wisdom, is my first mistake.
It’s always seemed to me that a response is needed when you get hit with some sort of negative influence. But, the longer I live, I’m thinking that it’s not doing me a great deal of good to react quickly to stressful input.
It’s just not “kosher” to react to negative events in anger or even annoyance. I’m not Jewish, but as a Christian, mindful of our Jewish roots, I learned a Jewish word, helpful when I’m faced with negativity. It’s “Selah.” It means to “pause and think about this.”
We’ve all heard of the infamous, “gut reaction.” My understanding of such a reaction is that it’s when you act almost instinctively to something coming at you from the outside world. You respond without thinking.
However, I vaguely remember from my ethereal academic past that one of the characteristics which make humans “higher animals” is that we are mindful rather than instinctual. We are theoretically better than our gut instincts. We should really take a think break before responding to any major input.
I’d prefer to selah, but I don’t always do it. As crude as it sounds, and I don’t like the phrase so much, but it describes accurately how I react to negative input, or a typical Monday; I get “pissed off” and I yell.
I’m surmising that our usual gut reaction is the total opposite of the mindfulness of Buddhism, the selah of Judaism, and the calm acceptance of “it is what it is” of modern mental health wisdom. One of the definitions of reaction is “an action in a reverse direction or a reverse movement.”
Do I want to be moving in reverse? If that’s what a reaction is, I’m not so sure I want it.
I have problems with the whole concept of reverse. I get totally discombobulated with the reverse gear on every lawn tractor I’ve operated. Seriously, I’ll go around in circles before I’ll try the over-complicated reverse gear.
When I think of going in reverse, I think of vehicles and the rear-view mirror. There is a saying about the rear-view mirror that serves as a metaphor regarding perspective. “The windshield is bigger than the rear-view mirror because where you are going is far more important than what you are leaving behind.”
Do I want to go back? No, I do not.
My husband once had a comical reaction to our British rental car. He exclaimed, “it has no reverse!” His immediate response to the complicated right-seat driver, left-hand gear shift, was shear panic. We laugh now, but it was terrifying then. However, he was brave enough to chauffeur our daughter and me through seven countries in Europe using that wildly unfamiliar vehicle with “no reverse.”
Lord knows, I have plenty of opportunities to practice the pause. But, unlike all of you perfect people out there, I don’t take advantage of all of my opportunities. I react. You know they say that “practice makes perfect,” so there is hope for me yet.
Like Quick Draw McGraw from the 1959 animated television series of the same name, I react prematurely to situations and sometimes come out of it looking inept or foolish, if not to others, than to myself. In the TV show, the anthropomorphized horse, sheriff character, is confident and well-intentioned but dim-witted. A quick-draw reaction is never pretty and it might just make one a horses (expletive), if you know what I mean.
I can confidently say that when I step back for a moment from stressful Monday morning input, I gain perspective. My instant responses are often tempered, not always totally changed, but softened after I take a bit of a pause.
I’m grateful that my quick reactions to negative events are usually private or shared only with my husband-partner. That way, I’m able to regain perspective before anything is “recorded in the books,” so to speak.
The ancient phrase, “look before you leap” comes to mind. It is a tenet of emotional intelligence and good communication to “think before you speak.” Taking it a bit further is the topic of this treatise – “pause before you react.”
I’m trying. I’d really like to earn the “higher animal” designation and stop reacting to negativity. God help me.