When a trouble comes your way, do you react or respond? There’s a difference.
To react, is to let the problem affect your thinking, perhaps in a negative way, and then emit that negativity back out again. Anger begetting anger, tension creating more tension, stress multiplying into more stress, are symptoms of reacting.
To respond is to think before you act. Rather than letting another’s emotion become your emotion, perhaps to your detriment, you mentally step back from any commotion, listen for a healing perspective, and then share that healing perspective with others involved. You respond with love and wisdom rather than react in haste and ignorance.
You can always be a healer with any relationship, circumstance or situation you encounter and turn troubled situations into more peaceful scenarios.
Feel free to assert your God-given dominion to think and act intelligently no matter what the world throws at you. The mind of Christ gives you poise and grace to exercise at all times.
Don’t be a reactor. Be a responder!
Just what I needed to know right this moment! Many thanks, Evan.
Its so very important indeed to think before reacting and always respond with love, no matter what. We save the situation, maintain good relations and gain only good.
Whereas getting emotional and reacting with anger and aggression can take away the love and understanding, peace and goodness from a relationship. We may even lose a very good friend, though at that moment of anger, we may not truly mean to hurt the person concerned. So as Evan rightly puts, its so much wiser to always take time to think and then act. Thank you ever so much Evan for daily uplifting our thought and helping us be better individuals.
Excellent! I had wished many times that I had heeded that guidance to choose wisdom over selfish ego.
Wise healing advice. Evan, I remember that years ago, at a lecture in Maine, you said: “Be a light bulb, not a sponge”. As I remember it, you went on to talk about the need not to absorb any upsetting or distressed etc. atmosphere around yourself, but to be a healing light untouched by commotion. That was a great lecture. I still have the notes in the Science and Health I brought to the lecture.
Such valuable words of wisdom…..and certainly the way Jesus lived and practiced that kept him and others safe, valued and healed. In thinking of the many testing encounters Mary Baker Eddy experienced, she lived this understanding that blessed all as well. To live this state of thought constantly is a major goal. Thank you Evan. And thank you, Marilyn, for the recollection from one of Evan’s lectures “to be a light bulb, not a sponge.” That is SO helpful.
The world certainly needs this solution as we hear of so many situations where response would be healing and where reaction leads to stress and causing unrest for themselves and others. Let us resolve to respond with love, compassion, calmness and helpful healing ideas today and each day forward. Yes, this is the Christ in us and reaching out to help and heal the world! Thank you for sharing this today!
Thanks, Evan, for these inspiring words of wisdom. I have notes from an article, “Church as a conversation” by Larissa Snorek Yates (Journal, July 2014), which not only applies to church, but to any personal situations. She states, “Whether inadequacy, annoyance, or impatience has seemed to characterize our relation to others or their response to us, learning to turn to God for our thoughts about the other person can break the pattern. … The fact is that there is no human mind to be stuck in a particular pattern.” I found this so helpful in dealing with someone who appears (to mortal view) to express all three of these: inadequacy, annoyance and impatience. If I point out (hopefully lovingly) an error she has made which affects other people as well, she responds with strong expressions of annoyance and becomes very defensive. As a result, I have stopped any efforts towards correction personally and, if it’s of vital importance, let someone else make the correction. The pattern has not, as yet, been broken, but at least my involvement has. I am just focusing on entertaining only loving thoughts.
Thanks for this! Also for the “light bulb not a sponge” metaphor.
I recently had a situation where someone verbally attacked me. I did my best to respond, although I did slip into reaction some. Usually I try to walk away from such situations, but I was unable to at the time; fortunately, someone else came in, so that was achieved, and I was given time to regroup. I was very grateful God sent that person in at that moment!
When the first person came back, after the other person left, I was able to stick to asserting the Truth. The challenge I then faced was not holding on to the feeling of injustice! Still working on that one.
It seems we no longer refer to ” FIREmen or MEDICS arriving on scene” but FIRST RESPONDERS. Are we not seeing a gentle shift in society to the omnipotent fixed Good that is Life?
Thank you Evan for these much
Needed reminder! I like the
Metaphor be a light bulb not a sponge
A goal to be reached for me!