RESPONSE vs REACTION

Recently I had a terrible experience at the barbershop, I had gone for my usual haircut but my regular barber wasn't around. So I told the person who was filling in for him what I wanted, and after my best efforts at micromanaging the process, things were going well; in fact he was surpassing my expectations. However in a cruel twist of events, he made an error and shaved off a huge portion off one side of my head; to make things worse it was at the top of my head.I wanted to react; at the moment, all the colorful words I knew came to mind, I was entitled to tell him off, wasn't I ? However I chose to respond to the situation, as reacting to it would not make my hair grow back. I asked him; what can we do to fix the situation? Which was the best decision to make at the time. He did try to fix it and mind you if you met me you wouldn't recognize me as my hair has never been this short. Let's look at the big picture, many times we face circumstances or events we never want to tackle or worse, those that throw our lives into chaos. Usually we tend to react to these, instead of responding to the situation. Reaction is mainly emotionally driven, and though at the time our reaction may seem appropriate and justified, it seldom helps to solve the problem. So next time you face an uncomfortable situation, choose to respond to it and ask; what can I do to fix this? Complaining, whining, or choosing to bite of the head of whoever has messed up (even though they may warrant it), won't solve your problem. Just like insulting the barber and storming out of the shop wouldn't have made my hair grow back.Choose to focus on the solution, not what happened. I discovered that every time I remembered the incident, it only dampened my mood, I didn't gain magical powers to travel back in time and avert the entire event. You too also, choose not to focus on the mistake made or that unpleasant situation as this will only make you more angry and frustrated. So next time you face a challenge, ask yourself; are you going to react or respond to it?

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