Reacting And Responding

Welcome back to Six Minutes this is Bob Proctor, and I’m going to give you an idea that you will see immediate value in not just for yourself but for your kids if you have any.

Quite a long time ago, I was doing alot of work for a pretty big company and some of the executives asked me if I would coach some of their kids. Now I wasn’t really looking for anything to do but finally I agreed. There was about a dozen kids and I worked with them over a 12 week period for one hour a week and it was almost all on conference call. There were a couple of kids I did meet and sit down with for maybe 30-40 minutes but outside of that it was all a group class and I just worked with them for one hour a week.

At the end of the 12 weeks, those kids stood on a stage in Kansas City in front of 10,000 people and they had that audience captivated. In fact, the parents (the audience) were taking notes. These kids were that good.

Now, kids get it faster than adults. Children are making up their mind. The parents have to change their mind. That’s much more difficult. At any rate, I started with these kids and I was trying to teach them the difference between reacting and responding.

I said to this one little guy, “Do you get involved in any sports? Do you have any problems in school?” He said “Yeah, I got in trouble last week”. And I said “Why?”. He said “I told the coach that he was stupid.” And I said “Well, that’ll probably get you in trouble pretty fast. I said “What were you playing?” He says “basketball. And he just made some dumb calls.” And I said,”What’d you say?” “I told him they were dumb calls and I got in trouble and I got kicked out of the game and got a detention where I had to do extra work.” Hmmm. I said “Well, let’s look at it this way.” I said “You’re probably not going to teach the coach anything. And the coach probably isn’t the greatest coach in the world or he’d be in the NBA or something like that coaching major ball.” “But” I said, “he’s doing the best he can with what he’s got and he didn’t deliberately make mistakes. So when he makes mistakes like that, if you let that bother you and react ... you’re going to get in trouble.” He said, “yeah”. I said “When you react to a situation, the situation is in control of you. When you respond to the situation, you stay in control. So you could look...nothing would have changed. The coach still would have made a dumb call and he might have been a dumb coach at that particular moment but you could have said to yourself. ‘That was a dumb call, I bet Phil Jackson would never had made a call like that’. But what the heck, it doesn’t really matter and then get on with the game. You wouldn’t have upset the coach. You wouldn’t have gotten in trouble. You’d have stayed in the game. Do you see the difference?” He said “yeah”.

Did any of the others get in trouble? Well, this one little girl said “I got in trouble the other day and I hit a boy.” And I said “Why did you hit him?” She said “he was saying stupid things to me”. I said, “I see. And so you hit him? And you got in trouble?” “Yeah.” (I think she was around 13, Ashley was her name.) I said “Well you know, Ashley, boys do dumb things. Boys don’t grow up very fast. I know from personal experience. Boys have puddles of dumb all around them — sometimes throughout their whole life, but certainly until they get a point of maturity and they mature a lot slower than girls. So, rather than hit him, which you did — you reacted and you got in trouble.

You could have looked at him and said “he’s just like a little boy. He’s not very bright. Well I’m not going to let him bother me.” “And if you did that, you would have become stronger. You see, when you respond you get stronger. When you react you get weaker because you’re forming the habit of reacting. Now you know, some women go through their whole life reacting to what men are doing. And some look at them and they respond. The ones that respond are the winners. The ones that react are the losers.”

There’s a great lesson here for every one of us. When something happens, it’s either going to control us or we’re going to control it. There’s one thing that’s certain ... something’s going to happen. Somebody’s going to say something. Somebody’s going to do something. Some condition or circumstance is going to come in and really give you a whack. You have the ability to stand back, size the situation up and say, “There’s a learning experience here. I wonder what it is.” And you’re responding and when you react, you lose.

So stop and think about that it’s the difference between reacting and responding. I know you want to win so if you practice responding and you’re going to be able to practice it today. You’re going to be able to practice it a number of times today. You’re going to come up with Results that Stick.

This is Bob Proctor thank you.