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EXPERIENCE DELAYED REACTIONS

I’d guess that a huge percentage of fights, conflicts, arguments, and other stressful encounters could be avoided if more people would learn to experience delayed reactions. A “delayed reaction” is simply an intentional hesitation that you make between the time something happens and the time you react. It’s creating a space between your initial feelings of irritation and the time you act on that irritation.

A delayed reaction is the opposite of a knee-jerk reaction. A knee-jerk reaction, as you know, is like an automatic response. It’s an instant (usually negative) reaction to some type of stimulus. For example, someone calls you a name or criticizes you, and you immediately fly off the handle. You get some bad news, and without so much as taking a breath, you panic. Or you see your boyfriend talking to another girl and you freak out. The point is, it’s instant—almost as if something else has taken over. There is no space; just a quick reaction. You’ve probably already realized that a staggering percentage of instant reactions backfire and end up hurting us as well as everyone else involved.

It’s fascinating, however, to observe how quickly the intensity of anger, fear, or other emotions fade away if you hold off on your reaction—give it a minute to settle, take a deep breath, give it some space. You’ll notice that something that seems terrible one minute often seems slightly less terrible the next. Or something that makes you see red one moment will be only slightly irritating the next.

This is great to know, because what it tells us is that if something is making us really angry (or sad, frustrated, stressed, anxious) right now, it probably won’t seem so bad in a short while. And, awhile after that, it won’t seem even that bad. So the question becomes: If something isn’t going to seem so bad in a little while, what’s the point of overreacting right now? Why yell and scream and get all frustrated and stressed if those feelings are going to fade away anyway? Why risk telling someone off in a moment of rage when, in all likelihood, you’ll feel less rage five minutes later?

In Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff, I included a strategy entitled “Ask Yourself the Question, ‘Will This Matter a Year from Now?’ ” Obviously, some things will matter a year from now. Yet most things won’t. The trick is to learn which things are really critical and which things are pretty much “small stuff.” It’s the small stuff that you don’t want to waste your energy on.

Think about all the fights you’ve seen and the reactive statements that have hurt someone’s feelings. Think about how many lives have been ruined or hurt—and how many people are in jail—simply because someone couldn’t keep from having a dangerous knee-jerk reaction.

Imagine, for a moment, what would have happened had the person inflicting the harsh words or the fist simply hesitated, taken a deep breath, and experienced a delayed reaction. The world still wouldn’t be perfect, but it sure would be quite a bit more peaceful.