To React or Respond?

Most of humankind live a life based on our emotions, if we feel good every thing goes fine in the world, but if we feel down everything is that way as well. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could live a stable balanced life, regardless of how we feel. Well it is possible.All it takes is a change in our thinking. The trouble is we have inherently learnt this way of living, we saw how our parents lived and we just copied without realising it. Our thinking or (lack of) was formed in those early years and have been so ingrained that we think it's natural. I want to tell you that it's not natural. You where born to be unique, and to be able to reason for your self. Someone said that we are born originals, but die copies, this I'm afraid is so true. Now I don't want to go into a whole lesson here, but want to touch on something that I believe can make a change in our lifestyle, by applying this into your thinking you will experience great respect from those around you. You will fine that people will want to be with you, you will be a blessing when you come, not a blessing when you have gone. React or Respond When we react to a situation or to something someone has said, we say things that we don't really mean,(knee jerk) and most times have to go back and apologise, unfortunately the damage is done, words cannot be erased, no matter how much we say sorry. There is a old saying."Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me" rubbish I say. If someone hurts you bodily you will eventually heal, but words never heal. They seem to go deep into our soul.You always remember them, you will always have a form of disrespect for that person. On the other hand, when we choose to RESPOND we have assessed the situation and we can now choose what to do. You can then either choose to ignore it or deal with it in a rational way. We as parents teach our kids to react instead of responding because we do it to them, we tend to get into rash arguments with them, instead of rationally dealing with them,You are an adult, they are children, they have not the intellect you have so arguments should be avoided at all cost. We do it because usually we are reacting to something they are doing or have done, we become so wound up after speaking and speaking and speaking to them, until we are at our whits end we then start shouting. All of the above could be avoided if we dealt with the situation calmly in the beginning by choosing to respond. I hope you find this short extract from my lecture helpful in any way