In this episode, Dr. Alex Golden unpacks the subtle yet powerful shift from reacting to truly responding in our daily lives. She shares how our quick, automatic reactions are often shaped by past experiences and old patterns. By building self-awareness, learning to pause, and asking ourselves what we really want to say or do, we can create space for thoughtful responses instead. Dr. Alex encourages listeners to reflect on their own reactions and begin the journey toward more intentional choices, with more insights to come in future episodes.
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Transcript:
Dr. Alex Golden:
Hello, hello. Welcome to the becoming zesty podcast. So glad that you’re here today. We’re going to be talking about responding, not reacting. And this is probably not a new concept to people, but I think that our definition around here at Zesty is a little bit different. So I wanted to have that discussion essentially, the topic of reacting and responding for us is that the real kind of hard truth that we believe around here is that we as humans don’t really get To do a whole lot of free will, choosing until we have cleared out some of the reasons that cause us to react to stuff. And so from how the brain works, you know, when we are babies, we learn that we learn by having experiences. So we see stuff, hear stuff, feel stuff, you know, just we live stuff, and that comes through the sense sensory organs and avenues, and then we actually learn language, right? Then we get to call it stuff. And so our brain, our neural nets are created by one experience after the other, and more, more accurately, is to say, after the interpretation of the experience that we have, and then we have languaging that then describes that. As we get older, we get more and more words to describe the experiences. That is all to say that when it comes to reacting versus responding, you can kind of see in that is that people get a hold of us in the programming the neural nets long before you get a chance to pick what they are. That means that until we do some work on ourselves, until we learn kind of who we are, how life works, what we can get to choose from all that is that all experiences as an adult go into old neural nets. So that is to say, we actually don’t figure out how we want to respond anew until we have looked at why we react the way that we do. So reactions we either either kind of agree with our preset neural nets, as in, yeah, this is how I saw it work for my family, for my parents, for my friends, and I agree that that’s how life works, and that it’s worth plus minus on whether that’s working out for me or you are seeing something that is you’re like, I don’t actually want that. I’m going to do the opposite, right? So if I tell you to, don’t think of a purple teddy bear, right? You either have to pull up the purple teddy bear and then remove it, or you have to change it to something else, like you gotta make a pink, or you gotta make it a flamingo, or something else, right? And so that’s the. Whole thing is that the way that the brain is designed is that we really can either do the thing that we know or we can do the opposite. But it’s kind of like options A and B are what we are stuck with. We don’t get to Option C until we have looked at some of those neural nets and have done some good thinking about are those even the two choices that we want to have now, and some things that type of thinking can be like, five seconds, right? Oh no, I don’t actually want to do either what my parents did or the opposite. I know option C, and it’s very clear to me, and that’s what I’m going to do. And here I go, doing it right that I’m not suggesting that this be a long, long, drawn out process, because actually, I don’t actually think it is for most people. I think at the end of the day, is that is more like if we just look at and describe accurately what’s happening. Most people don’t have that hard of a time going with this kind of thing, right? Like, as in, you, you know that if you realize that there’s an option, see, you can go do that, and that’s the response, not the reaction. And so not being reactive, really is, is another way of saying. I have chosen to think of myself as an empowered being as part of the process. That’s really what it’s saying. When we are reactive and we choose to stay reactive, we’re essentially placing ourselves in the funnel as such like you’re not very strong. And so there are things that you need to react to, right, that thinking places us as in things are about as big as you are, or maybe even bigger. So they can come and supersede what you’re doing, what plans you had, and now you have to react to it, whereas living in responsiveness is actually more of that’s its own discrete choice to say, actually, while things do validly happen, and things do come into my awareness, and there are things that I need to think of, and there’s things that I need to make decisions around. The reality of it is that I’m still going to keep it under my purview. What is my choice in this? And that’s really what it looks like to live an unreactive life. So I think that when people are talking about like being reactionary or not reacting to life, a lot of times they’re honing in on resources that you need only from having thought of it in a way that doesn’t really make sense, right? If I say, Oh, just you know, you just need to respond better. Well, gosh, yeah, you need steps for that. And there’s, like, you know, things that you need for it. But if all I’m saying is that, if you can look at what responding even means and say, Huh, it’s actually a state of living from choice of saying, I can see the old way. I can see the kind of going the opposite way of the old way. But what would be? What are the other options? And if I can’t see if it looks like there are no other options that having the right thinking allows you to catch yourself, because that’s where you say, Huh? Why does it look in a world of infinite possibilities. Why is this current viewpoint telling me that there are no other options, right? That alone is where I think this kind of thinking comes into play. Because once you call it the right thing, you actually don’t have to deal with the effects of misnaming it, of MIS qualifying, of saying, calling it something it isn’t because to even feel like you have to react often is a way of thinking that limits your options. Right to say, I have to react to this thing that just came into my my partner lost their job, or, you know, my, this person’s, or this, I have to react to them. You actually don’t. A response can be to wait, right the option C could be to say, normally, I would have acted already. But actually, Option C looks like I’m not going to just because they open up the door for inviting the next thing, I actually don’t need to take that, that is not something I need to modify my current plan for. So do you see how that works? This is really the way, because in responsiveness, now you know we can and we will get more higher level when it comes to cultivating that thinking and making that choice after. Words, respond, living in response. There are actual resources there, right? Like we can actually begin to say, what do I need to get from the moment of pause, if I’ve identified that I am wanting to react, and now I am choosing a new path and I’m going to respond. What is it that I need to get for me to respond in a way that I’m proud of right? Maybe in the pause, I’m recognizing that I need some clarity before I respond. Maybe I need some calm and and and some space before I respond. Maybe there’s some maybe I actually don’t have all of the information, and what I really need is to have some conversations to get that info for myself, right? That all that is possible. But the thing is, I could record a podcast episode and all of those great things, and I will, but without this one where we actually talk about what is the thinking that gets us to react and respond, all the other stuff is relatively unusable for us like you, you won’t make the call to even ask yourself the question, because you’ll be like, No, no. Alex said this, you know, this is for this kind of situation, and my situation isn’t that. But that’s where you’ll be wrong, because that is the situation I’m talking about. You just don’t necessarily see it that way, right? So for the start, I want you to see where you can get a little more creative on looking over your life and to say, Where am I still respond? Where am I still reacting to what is or reacting to what’s happening, reacting to the old, reacting to limitations. Where is that still impacting me? Because all of those areas where I can begin to see, where are my opportunities for response, where is my thinking a little limited, that makes me think that I am stuck with one version of this problem, of this scenario where I might not have to be now, some things are just the way they are, but so many things in life are not so where can you begin to ask those questions? And then as we go, as you walk that path, I’m going to be coming in with another podcast episode that is really all about once you have made that decision, what does it really look like? What else can we ask ourselves? How can we support ourselves through the process, and I will tell you now, if you think you’re just gonna be like, Oh, I got it, I’ll just listen to that podcast episode, and I’ll know it’s cool. You will listen to it, it will make sense, but you won’t know how to utilize the stuff in it until you’ve done this kind of thinking. So make sure that you are doing a little assessment as you go. This is something I do routinely. I reassess, because sometimes I 111, pass through. It looks like I’m reacting to certain things in my life one way. But lo and behold, four weeks later, two weeks later, you know, a year later, it can look very, very different, and all of a sudden I’m like, whoo. How could I miss this? This looks so obvious. Well, don’t let that be a habitual thing, right? Like, after a while, I was like, I don’t want to get into a place where I feel like, oh wow, I’m surprised. Like, there’s if, if I am shocked once or twice, that should be enough for me, like, why don’t I stop being shocked and start being prepared? So this is where I am, you know, kind of role modeling. What is it that it looks like to really live this path, reiterating over and over and over again, no matter how great your life is, it can always be even better, even juicier, we can always help more people. So check that out on reacting versus responding. I would love to hear from you. Shoot us an email support at becoming zesty.com, to share kind of what’s your experience with this? Where are you getting stuck? And then, of course, I will be coming in with the podcast episode to break it all down for you, make it super, super simple and super, super actionable. So happy thinking. I’m sending you lots of love, and I’ll catch you on the next episode.