You’ve probably heard the saying “Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it” by Charles R Swindoll?
However, have you ever really thought about this in depth and how we can and do apply this in our everyday lives?
I am sure you can all relate to the fact that we are made up of our experiences and those people who influenced us in our early and informative years; those people who were our role models, and those whom we thought were ‘right’!
We all have good and bad days, and on the good days, if you’re like me then you might be more patient and understanding than on those real ‘bad’ days when you might feel everything has gone wrong, and you have that ‘can’t be bothered’ mindset.
We might have something thing happen to us on a good day and react to it in a sensible way; and yet if the same thing happened to us on a not so good day, we react totally differently, and then quite often chastise ourselves about how we reacted, or perhaps over-reacted to the situation.
Now this might be an experience or a situation with a loved one or someone in our work or business. Either way, when the reaction has taken place, and the spoken word said, or the action has taken place, then it’s too late, the damage is done.
The reaction might now cause 90% damage rather than 10%.
Now this is all very well and good, but how can we change how we react?
How we react is a habit, more often than not, and if we think about the situation and how we reacted and how we could have, or should have reacted, as well as thinking what triggered off the reaction, we are halfway to changing to a better habit.
Perhaps a New Year challenge, is to think about situations last year where we could have reacted better or differently and replay these to a more positive reaction which should replace the possible bad outcome to a better or good outcome.
Why not give it a try?
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