Responding to your life from a calm place can support a sense of peace, wellbeing, and resilience. Many of our everyday moments are spent reacting to what is happening by fighting against whatever is already here and wanting things to be otherwise. We can begin to change our habitual patterns of reactivity by noticing the arising and cessation of reactivity. Notice what sparks the reactivity, the bodily sensations, feelings and thoughts that accompany its arising, the habitual behaviors in which we engage, any additional patterns associated with the reactivity and what brings about its cessation.
You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.
Jon Kabat-Zinn
As we bring awareness to the patterns of reactivity, we gradually become more skillful at recognizing when reactivity arises and relating in a healthy way with the difficult sensations, feelings and thoughts. As we learn to relate more skillfully with the experience of reactivity, we learn that this, too, is an event that, like a wave, rises, crests and falls, and we learn that we can pause, breathe and watch the reactivity arise without impulsively acting. In this way, we transform reactivity and practice responding to events in our lives in a way that supports greater peace, happiness, and resilience.
Try noticing your daily experience. In what ways are you reacting to things that happen, and in what ways are you responding? Notice how it feels in your body when you react vs how it feels when you respond. Which choice, reacting vs responding, leads you to a greater sense of peace and happiness?