Upgrade Your Reactions - Episode: 018
Have you ever considered how often you're simply reacting by default rather than on purpose? For most guys, it's close to 95% of the time. On this episode of The Durable Dad podcast, I, Tommy Geary, will guide you through the fascinating nature of our reactions, and how, with a little awareness and understanding of our thought cycle, we can learn to manage them effectively.
Packed with insights from my business coach Dave and examples from my own clients' experiences, this episode unravels the process our brains go through when receiving information from the outside world. We all react instinctively - it's part of being human. However, certain situations call for more mindful responses. By understanding how our thoughts and emotions drive our actions, we're able to slow down and choose a more measured response to various scenarios. So, whether you're faced with a curious child's incessant questions or a heated conversation with your spouse, this podcast episode will equip you with the tools to navigate life's challenges more effectively. Tune in, as we take you one step closer to being a Durable Dad.
Resources mentioned:
002: Taking Action: A Powerful Tool to Add to Your Belt (Spotify)
002: Taking Action: A Powerful Tool to Add to Your Belt (Apple)
Speaker 1
This is The Durable Dad podcast. I'm your host, tommy Geary. This show is going to give you the skills and tools you need to be a rock solid man for your work, your community and, most importantly, your family. Alright, what's up guys? Episode number 18 coming at you The Durable Dad podcast.
Speaker 1
I am sitting here in my office and it's Friday and it's funny because I wasn't going to record this topic. So this topic is going to be about reacting versus responding to what's happening in our environment, and I have this written on my whiteboard over here a bunch of topics that I want to talk about, and I wasn't going to talk about it this week, but earlier today I was listening to a podcast from one of my coaches, my business coach, dave, and he put out a podcast on reacting And he totally changed what I was going to be talking about And I stopped listening halfway through because he was going to give some tips and I didn't want to hijack what he was saying because I wanted to have some original ideas here. But I was going to talk about not reacting And the knowledge that Dave dropped was that we always react. We are supposed to react. It's how the brain works. It's how the body works. We take the environment outside of us through our senses, through our sight, our smell, our taste, our hearing, our touch, and we react. The brain goes into everything that's happened in our past Have we been in this environment before? Have we come across this before? It takes these similar inputs and it also assesses what we believe about ourselves. Are we good in these situations? Do we know how to handle these situations, or is this a situation where we need to be careful And we have these default reactions and they're part of how we operate And they're helpful in a lot of ways?
Speaker 1
I was kind of thinking like when is it helpful? And I think it's helpful when we're playing sports And I was just thinking about the Spartan race I ran recently and running over terrain that's rocky and there's little hop in here and there, my body can look ahead and talk to my feet really quickly to move and navigate it really well and I'm just reacting. In the moment I'm not thinking too hard. I'm just subconsciously thinking, based on my past and my abilities and my beliefs, that I know how to do this. That's when reacting is helpful And it's probably helpful when we're in traffic and we're driving and we see some cars up ahead swerving and we know rain's coming or something like that, and we are able to slow down quickly.
Speaker 1
And then there's some times when we react too quickly, like with our spouses When your wife says something to you and you're interpreting it as a certain tone, your hearing is interpreting a certain tone, your sight is looking at her facial expression and your brain goes to all the past and takes that tone as she's pissed off or she's annoyed, and we respond really quickly with being defensive, trying to explain our side. And that's when a quick reaction usually doesn't create the communication or the outcome that we want. So I want to talk about managing our reactions and being in control of how we respond to that outside environment and the inputs that we take in. So we're inputting stuff from our five senses and we're going to react no matter what, and what we want to do is slow this process down before we act, before we respond. We're going to break this down with the thinking cycle. So I have an earlier episode I think it's episode two about I don't know exactly the name of it, but we'll link to it in the show notes And it's like the one tool to add to your tool belt or something like that. But it's a thinking cycle. Our thoughts, the sentences that are running through our brain create our emotions And then our emotions drive our actions, how we act, how we behave, what we do, what we say. So when we're starting to understand what our normal reactions are, we can think of it as like we're looking at game film. If you ever played sports or you ever hear athletes get interviewed after games and they talk about how they study game film, this is what we can do in our everyday life. So you find a time where you didn't act the way you wanted to or behave the way you wanted to, and you go back And I was working with one dude on this and you start looking at what were you feeling, what were you thinking, how were you interpreting the environment?
Speaker 1
And so we were working on his relationship with his son and his son's a teenager, and he was just asking a bunch of questions. He was asking a question and then my client would answer, and then he'd ask another question and my client would answer, and he just noticed that he was short with his responses. He even got to the point where he was snapping back, calling the questions stupid. Why are you asking these? And I totally got it. I mean my daughter's only five. But those questions of why, why, why And so what my client was thinking was that he knows these answers.
Speaker 1
He's just messing with me. He does this all the time. He asked too many questions And when his brain was interpreting the input which the input was his son's words, his son's tone he was feeling irritated. So his thoughts about he asked too many questions was making him feel irritated. And when we're looking at game film, we know that the actions ended up being actions he doesn't want to take. So we don't really have to look at those, but what we do is we dive into that emotion, irritated. And this is how we really start controlling our reactions.
Speaker 1
When we understand what irritation feels like. It feels like wanting to get out of there, just ditch out on the conversation. It feels like wanting to react with a raised voice, calling names and trying to hold it back at the same time. That's what irritation can feel like. So then when we are looking back at this film and we start to understand, okay, when I'm in that situation and the environment is my son asking me these questions, my brain likes to think about how he's asking too many questions and he knows these answers and he's messing with me. So those are the thoughts cruising through my brain that are optional thoughts. I don't have to think them. However, when I do, i feel irritated, and irritated feels like wanting to remove myself, wanting to react quickly, and then that's my typical reaction, that's my body's reaction.
Speaker 1
Then the next step is acknowledging that the son's probably going to do this again, acknowledging that my daughter's probably going to ask why, why, why, why again. So if we don't look at the game film and we don't visualize what's going to happen when it happens again, our body's just going to react the same way. Our body's just going to have the same reaction. But if we want to slow that down and respond, we ask how do we want to feel next time this happens? What do we want to be thinking instead of he's asking too many questions? And when we started talking about that, my client wanted to respond more open, more curious, more receiving, more caring, more loving. Like awesome emotions, right, those are the emotions we want to parent from. What do those emotions feel like? compared to irritated? Well, those emotions feel more settled. They feel more at ease, not as stressed, awesome.
Speaker 1
Now we're building this new thinking cycle. If we were feeling more open and caring, how would we act? And we would ask more questions? We would answer the questions and we would just be there and connected with our son, trying to understand him, instead of trying to stop him from asking the questions. So the last step is what do we need to be thinking? What are the new sentences we want to put in our head that would create that different feeling?
Speaker 1
The thoughts that my client came up with were we're on the same team. We're doing this together. We both want the same result. Those thoughts might not land with you, but when we're thinking about another person that we're talking to, that, we're on the same page with them. We both want the same outcome. There is going to be more of a feeling of connection And that is how we start controlling our reactions and deciding how we want to respond.
Speaker 1
He's changed his thinking cycle. Now it's when he inputs that his son's asking him questions. He thinks he's asking me questions. What does he really need here? We're on the same team. We're trying to get to the same result Feels, instead of irritated, more open, and then he's going to behave a different ways and respond in a way that he wants to and is intentional. And so there's some intentional work that has to go on here, breaking down the game film of the past and then planning for the next game, because we know we're probably going to be in a similar environment again. And it's really, really powerful. I mean, this guy emailed me a couple days later and told me what an awesome night him and his son had. He was like an A plus night And I mean that's awesome. He stepped up and was willing to take a look at his reactions, how our brain typically acts, based on default, and control his reactions. We're going to react no matter what, but understand, slow it down enough to respond the way that we want to. So that's the work. Look at the game film, why you reacted the way you did. Look ahead How do you want to respond in the future, based on the same reaction, but deciding how you want to respond. Take that, apply it.
Speaker 1
I'm going to go back and listen to my coach, dave's podcast to see what he said about reactions. If there's anything extra, maybe I'll throw it in next week And if you want to find out more information, go to thedurabledadcom. And actually, right now I am launching a new course. It's called Stop Losing Your Temper, so if you go to thedurabledadcom you can learn more about that. It's going to be a six week course. It's live. We're going to work in a group with a bunch of other dads, just going to be a space where we can have some fun with this stuff. Right, looking at how we respond to anger Usually, what our quick reactions are and how we can move forward and change that. And I got exercises and tactics like the one I just gave you guys. So go check that out. Talk to you guys next week. Peace.
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