Focus on Your Response

Give up trying to change people, places, and things; and even your thoughts, feelings, and sensations. Forget about it.

You may have picked up on the fact that you can’t do much about these six things. Sure, you can influence them at times, but ultimately they are outside of your control. They are, however, what you are experiencing.

Focus on what is in your control.

When you experience feeling lonely. Don’t try to change the feeling of loneliness. Focus on how you would like to respond to that loneliness. On what you would like to create in that space of loneliness. Irish people have been known to put it this way, “loneliness is visiting me today.” Interestingly, this is a very adaptive way of relating to one’s experience. Not overly identifying with it. But experiencing it.

When you are upset about the weather, politics, or traffic, don’t try to change it. Focus on your response, on what you’d like to create.

Viktor Frankl once said “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

Whatever you may be experiencing, ask yourself: “What if this was not a problem?” And then, “How would I like it to be?” …this is in your control – this is your ability-to-respond to life as life IS.