DIY for Your Soul Podcast - Acting vs. Reacting

Have you ever found yourself having had a hugely strong reaction to something, but when you look back on it in hindsight you wonder what the big deal was at the time, and why you reacted so strongly to it? Have you ever felt some emotion rise in you, much like lava in a volcano, you’re unable to stop it, and it erupts out of you even  when you know that it really shouldn’t?

There are times, for nearly every one of us, when we find ourselves in these types of situations, where we know we are overreacting, while we’re in it, or in hindsight, but we just couldn’t stop ourselves. We realized that it was all in our head, at least on an intellectual level, but emotionally, it was as real as anything could possibly be. Why is this?

How do we let things in our minds get so out of hand in the first place? Why do so many of us find ourselves overreacting to situations that do not warrant it? It goes right back to our story, our narrative that is merely a reflection of our deepest held beliefs about ourselves.

In this podcast we find that the feelings brought up by stressful situations, and the behaviors that accompany them, are often reactions - meaning to act as one has done in the past. Essentially we just repeat old emotions and old behavior.

We’ll learn that it’s better to act instead of reacting. We will discover that it’s often best if we can take a moment and observe vs. judge. And in doing so, we’re likely to find that our initial labels and judgments on things may not be as they appear, since we often cannot see the bigger picture at the moment

It’s all about a shift in perspective; one that allows us to determine how important something really is and if our feelings about a thing are about what’s really happening or based somewhere in our past. It is a skill that allows us to see the situation in a different way than we have before.