Learning to Respond to Life Rather than Reacting to It
As depicted below, the Wisdom Gap refers to the learned ability to distance yourself from your thoughts, feelings, and emotions.
Reacting
Here’s an example of reacting to life. You’re driving home on a stretch of road under repair by the City when you encounter some very sharp rocks that instantly puncture both front tires.
After the initial shock wears off and you’ve steered your car to safety, your emotions swell – anger at the City for not taking better care of the road; anxiety over who to call and what to do next; worry over the extent of the damage and cost of the repair bill; and dread thinking about how much of your time this is all going to consume, to say nothing of the many frustrations expected along the way.
In short, you’re angry, frustrated, anxious, and feeling overwhelmed. Upsetting thoughts swirl, seemingly of their own accord, with you as their helpless victim. What had been a peaceful mindset just moments before has been transformed into a right awful mood. Your day is ruined.
Tragically, this is how most of us interact with the world when things don’t go our way- we immediately identify with our thoughts.
Indeed, we don’t even realize we’re thinking. Instead, we take our thoughts unquestioningly as simply reflecting reality.
Sadly, what we fail to realize is this; that in the absence of our thinking, everything in life is, in fact, neutral – it simply is what it is. Our ruined day is just us thinking ourselves into a snit.
Minus this realization, we become our thoughts. If angered we become anger. If anxious we become anxiety. We lose perspective, we lack intelligence, and our wisdom goes missing in action. And let’s not even think about the awful health ramifications of exposing ourselves to chronic stress.
In short, absolutely nothing good flows from this way of dealing with life. Fortunately, there is an alternative – we can choose to respond rather than react.
Responding
Learning to respond to life means realizing fully that we are not our thoughts, feelings, and emotions. In other words, with practice, we can readily develop the ability to feel angry without acting out in anger. We can feel anxious without becoming overwhelmed with anxiety. We can feel jealousy and envy and regret and the full host of negative feelings without getting lost in them (and making bad life choices as a result).
Instead, we simply observe ourselves feeling a certain way: “There’s me, and there’s what I’m feeling” – two completely distinct things.
YOU: the raw inputs from your five senses – seeing, hearing, tasting, etc. This is reality. Of note and import is that these inputs are totally neutral; not good, not bad, simply ‘what is’.
THOUGHTS, FEELINGS, and EMOTIONS: as depicted below, these are simply your interpretation of these raw sensory inputs, your personal take on ‘what is’, after being filtered through your unique set of accumulated life experiences, preferences, biases, judgments, opinions, concepts of what’s right and wrong, beliefs, etc..
Through daily meditation practice we learn to see our true selves as separate and distinct from our thoughts, feelings, and emotions. We learn to simply observe them rather than identify with them.
In so doing, we take charge of our mental well-being. We see that we have the ability to choose how, or whether, we wish to respond to life rather than mindlessly reacting to whatever thoughts, feelings, and emotions pass through our mind.
In short, we stop taking our thoughts so seriously. We remind ourselves that what we perceive as reality is just our conditioned thoughts. Put a dozen people in the same exact situation and each will have their own unique perception of “reality”, and what to do about it.
Further, once skilled in thought recognition, we readily acknowledge that thoughts can’t hurt us or cause us emotional upset without our permission.
Ultimately, we realize fully that we are the sole thinker behind each and every one of our troubling thoughts and that we possess the ability to redirect our thinking in whatever direction we so choose.
Given this ability, why would we ever choose to dwell on troubling thoughts?
Why indeed. And so, armed with this recognition, we simply observe how we’re feeling and decide what, if anything, to do about it, including simply letting such thoughts pass through our mind like so many scudding clouds on a windy day. In short, we see them for what they are – simply thoughts, possessing no power over us.
In physical terms, what creating a Wisdom Gap does is turn down the volume of our reactive amygdala and permit the emotional intelligence of our responsively-wise prefrontal cortex to come to the fore.
Evolutionary Reminder
As I’ve mentioned in other posts, it’s always important to keep in mind that feelings and emotions are just evolution’s way of nudging us to behave in ways that enhance the odds of passing on our genetic material.
But as we know, evolution cares not one jot about our happiness – that’s up to us to achieve through wise life choices. And, by definition, wise life choices require wisdom, and this means ready access to the Wisdom Gap, the recognition that provides us access to clear, responsive thinking.
Case Study: Responding Rather Than Reacting to Those Blown Tires
Armed with knowledge of the Wisdom Gap, instead of giving in to feelings of overwhelm we :
- Know to make use of any number of mindfulness techniques to calm our jangled nerves such as PBS (Pause, Breathe, and Smile). All such techniques serve to relax our body, slow down our anxious thinking, help us regain perspective, and provide renewed access to our innate wisdom.
- We laugh at our predicament, one we recognize as simply being part of life, no big deal, and nothing that untold others haven’t also experienced – and lived to tell the tale.
- We reflect on the truth that clinging to our likes (here, functioning tires) or trying to push away our dislikes (here, flat tires, being stranded, etc.) leads only to needless psychological suffering. Better to simply accept the reality of each situation that life presents and deal with it, minus any drama which adds nothing to the solution and just makes us feel worse. We take to heart that there are no “problems”, simply situations to deal with. Indeed, “problems” are just things we make up in our own heads. In the absence of labeling a situation as ‘bad’, it just remains a situation, nothing more – simply a reality to be dealt with.
- We feel gratitude that we weren’t hurt. And after all, it’s only a car, and a car can be fixed.
- We maintain perspective, in this case that others around the world are experiencing far greater challenges than this. Indeed, by comparison, this is simply too trivial to fuss over.
- We remember that our perception of life is driven totally by our own thinking and that we’re in control of that thinking, our thinking isn’t in control of us. In other words, negative feelings are simply the result of negative, dysfunctional thoughts. Knowing this, we just permit them to pass on by. By not locking on to them, better thoughts, wiser thoughts, can (and will) take their place. In this healthier state of mind, solutions come more readily to mind. And then we simply implement them, minus any needless angst and inner turmoil.
- We remind ourselves to view life’s challenges not as problems but as wonderful teaching moments to practice mindfulness. After all, it’s when the going gets tough that we’re most thankful for our daily mindfulness practice. It’s this practice that permits us to maintain healthy mental functioning in the face of challenging circumstances. Indeed, in the absence of such practice there is a near zero chance of ever responding wisely. Why? Because reacting to life habitually and unthinkingly is what most of us practice to death daily. We unwittingly mold ourselves into masters of reacting! In physical terms, what we are doing is strengthening the neuronal pathways leading to mindless reaction while leaving dormant those pathways that would otherwise provide access to responsive wisdom.
- We notice when our thinking drifts anxiously off to an unchangeable past (“if only I’d taken that other route I was considering!!! How stupid of me!”) or an unknowable made-up future (“Dealing with the City over damages is going to be SO frustrating!!!!”). In that moment of noticing our loss of presence we simply let go of such thoughts and return our attention to the present, the only moment that actually exists. Mindfulness, after all, is totally about living in the present moment.
Healthy Mental Functioning IS Possible
Now I know that many reading this post will view its message as fantastical thinking, positing a degree of thought-recognition and self-control both unattainable and unrealistic; perhaps even a tad odd.
After all, I certainly would have thought so in my pre-mindfulness days. Back then, I saw all thoughts as real and needing to be reacted to.
And as for self-control being perceived as odd, on more than one occasion I have been taken to task for failing to get upset, something society clearly deems to be EXPECTED!
But why get upset over life’s challenges if you don’t have to? Surely it’s better to simply deal with each situation that arises matter-of-factly, minus the drama, and then move on. This is the essence of the Wisdom Gap.
But Mental Health and Peace of Mind Don’t Just Happen
Developing the ability to recognize that our own thinking is always the root cause of any and all psychological suffering we experience doesn’t just happen. As with anything worthwhile in life, it takes a modicum of practice and dedication.
Case in point, people will spend hours exercising to enhance their physical health yet totally ignore the need to also attend to their mental health.
In my own personal experience, true healthy mental functioning is realized only through a dedicated meditation practice (i.e. daily) coupled with moments of quiet reflection on life’s truths (i.e. daily exposure to the accumulated wisdom passed on to us by history’s greatest thinkers).
This blog is dedicated to sharing some of that wisdom, and I encourage you in the strongest possible terms to read this and other mindfulness sources with the utmost regularity.
In the final analysis, please know this; that your happiness and psychological well-being lie fully in your hands and that no circumstances, no matter how dire, can keep you from their achievement.
Warmest wishes,
Rob @ Living a Mindful Life
Addendum: The Wisdom Gap Prrr Practice
For me, the title of this wisdom practice brings to mind the image of a peaceful, contented cat, perhaps apropos as we practice responding to life’s travails rather than reacting to them:
Pause
relax
reflect
respond
Pause: Use the tensing of your body to an upsetting situation as a warning: “Do not go down that path!”. Instead, pause; purposely create a Wisdom Gap, that essential bit of space between stimulus and response.
Relax: Take a few slow, deep breaths and consciously relax your muscles. Doing so preferentially activates our calming parasympathetic nervous system, shuts down our stress reaction, and permits our Executive Functioning to come to the fore (i.e. impulse control, emotional control, and creativity).
Reflect: Having put yourself into a somewhat calmer state of mind, take a further moment to reflect on the situation at hand, its trivial nature in the big scheme of things, and the benefits of responding with respect and wisdom instead of anger.
Respond: Having created a Wisdom Gap, you now possess the clarity required to respond to the situation with compassion and innate wisdom.
However, if after attempting the Prrr practice you still feel agitated, it’s surely best to request a time out before dealing with the situation. Whatever the matter at hand may be, if it’s important enough, it deserves to be dealt with properly once you (and your perceived protagonist) are both in a better frame of mind. Simply put, wisdom needs a calm mind; an agitated mind is antithetical to a positive outcome.
And lastly, if the situation at hand is ultimately not that important, then surely it’s best to just let it go. After all, life is far too short and far too precious to waste any of it fussing over trivial matters; and most issues are, from a big-picture perspective, utterly trivial.
Warmest wishes,
Rob @ Living a Mindful Life