This afternoon I was driving down a busy street in my hometown. The car ahead of me swerved around a truck parked near the side of the road. Just then the gentlemen driving the car in the left lane slammed on his breaks. From where I was sitting, the two weren't anywhere close to colliding.
The car on the right then retaliated by cutting him off. They sped up and off in the distance I could see the cat and mouse game went on for quite some time. That looks so ridiculous, I thought to myself. Two grown adults acting out.
It then dawned on me that I have absolutely partaken in similar behavior. I wondered how many times I would have refrained from doing, or saying something stupid if I had the ability to look outside myself.
What's interesting is we actually do. It just requires restraint and a little recalibration. When something occurs we tend to instantly react. STIMULUS = RESPONSE.
But when we slow that process down and interrupt it with a thought we have the capacity to make a better decision. It looks more like this:
STIMULUS + THOUGH = REACTION
We can do this by collecting ourselves when someone cuts us off, says something unsettling, or an event fails to go the way we hoped.
In other words, we can choose the way we react to our environment.
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