Choose Your Actions After Your Initial Reactions

The positivity when you choose the actions after your reactions is profound.

Photo by Conscious Design on Unsplash

Let’s face it. Shit happens. What’s more, you’ll encounter happenings that get you upset on the surface without full context. And then you get to decide what comes next.

For example, I saw that a friend had done a thing with a group of friends that I was not included in. That got me super upset. I immediately felt hurt, got annoyed that I was left out, and it began what could easily have been a full-on downward spiral.

There was a choice before me. Stay upset, sulk, get more upset, and make lots of assumptions with no information. Or — choose instead how to act and react, and move past it.

Initially, I tossed my phone aside — not hard, just away. Then I got up, got my headphones, went out on my deck, and meditated.

At the beginning of my meditation, I let all the feelings I was feeling hit me and roll into and through me. I nearly cried, but the tears never came. Then I got calmer, and it occurred to me that maybe it wasn’t that the friends left me out — maybe it was a thing in a sub-group I am not, in fact, part of.

As I calmed and sank even deeper into my meditation, I let it go entirely. It doesn’t matter…