How Can You Tell Whether You Are Reacting or Responding? - The Little Prince Series

How Can You Tell Whether You Are Reacting or Responding

? - The Little Prince Series

Daily Insight from the Story ofThe Little Prince

Suppose you find yourself in a situation in which you aren't sure whether you should speak up for yourself, or whether you should remain quiet and process any emotions that arise within yourself.

Whether you let your voice be heard or choose to keep quiet, the real question is: are you coming from a centered response or from an emotional reaction?

We can speak up as either a response or a reaction, and we can also remain silent as either a response or a reaction.

To discern the difference, the first thing to do is to become centered. To act out of a reactive state is never helpful, always destructive.

In the seventh chapter of the story, when the pilot makes an inane statement in response to the Little Prince's question about why some flowers have thorns, the little fellow first exclaims, "Oh!"

There is the emotional reaction. It's instantaneous, not thought out, coming straight from the reptilian part of the brain that developed some 300 million years ago. At this point the amygdala, added to the brain about 100 million years ago as the source of feeling, and the more logical prefrontal cortex that's much more recent (perhaps only 100,000 years old) and gives us the ability to exercise choice and willpower, haven't kicked in.

As his cerebral cortex comes alive and assesses the situation, notice what the Little Prince does. The author remarks:

There was a moment of complete silence.

In the stillness of that moment the Little Prince shifts from his reptilian brain into his ability to address an issue in a logical, rational, centered manner.

Note that there is nothingpassive about the little fellow's response. Quite the contrary, we're told he "flashed back at" the pilot.

There is also feeling in what he says, "a kind of resentfulness." It isn't quite resentfulness, but he's letting the pilot know by his tone that he isn't at all pleased that he tried to fob him off with a meaningless answer to a matter that for him is so important.

But all of this is done in a manner that seeks toconnect, not to lash out in hurt with the intent of withdrawing from the pilot to sulk. Neither does he cause the pilot to distance himself because he feels attacked.

So the question is: Where, within us, is our answer coming from? Are we caught up in a reptilian reaction, or are we flowing from our true being?

The key is always the moment of stillness. This centers us.

Until we are practiced at discerning when we are coming from our still center, using our logic and feelings to express this center accurately and meaningfully, we may need more than a moment of stillness. We may even need to go sit in another room or take a walk until our reptilian reactivity dies down and we are firmly in charge of ourselves.

We want to bein charge, notdriven by an emotional charge.

Even though the Little Prince employs the full range of his emotion because this is something so important to him, which he is so passionate about, since what he says comes from the heart it doesn't rupture the relationship but on the contrary draws them closer.

The result is that the pilot, feeling the Little Prince's heart, reaches out to him with great compassion.

So the incident has taken the pilot out of his mechanical mindset, which is represented by the way he was fixated on a stuck bolt in his crashed plane, into a place of deep feeling and connection.

I used to apply three tests when I was learning to discern whether I was reacting, and therefore need to process an emotion internally by myself, or whether I was responding creatively. I'll mention two today, then develop the third tomorrow because it piggybacks on the first.

The first is whether we have become still, in touch with our center. We should never act until we have steadied ourselves and can come from the heart, not the heat of the moment.

The second is whether we are attached to the outcome of what we share. Can we put our case to the other person, expressing it from our heart with all the feeling that flows naturally, then allow the person the freedom to respond asthey wish to?

If we are in any way trying tomanipulate the other's response, the situation will likely escalate, or at least create distance between us.

So many of the difficulties we run into in relationships result from our attempts to manipulate the other. We want them to do a certain thing, say a certain thing, be a certain way.

It doesn't work this way. Whenever we have such intentions, this is a time to process our emotions within ourselves.

Healthy exchanges always open up space for both parties to act with greater freedom.

We are manipulating when we shade the truth (or hold it back altogether) so the person won't reject us or leave. We are manipulating when we tell them things we think they want to hear but that don't come from our heart. We are manipulating when we in any way try to control the outcome.

The journey we have embarked on with the Little Prince is a journey intoauthenticity in every aspect of our life.

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