A Simple Formula for Responding not Reacting

A powerful system to confront the epidemic of reactivity

When chaos strikes; when you’re push, pulled, or prodded; when unexpected events occur, you can go down one of two paths: you can either respond or react.

Responding, a spin off from the word responsibility, is considerate and deliberate. Reacting, on the other hand, literally means to meet one action with another.

Reacting is immediate and rash. Responding is slower. Responding creates more space between an event and what you do (or don’t do) with it. In that space, you give acute emotions some room to breathe, and you give yourself a better chance to understand what is happening, make a plan using the most evolved part of your brain, and move forward accordingly.

Responding is harder than reacting. It takes more time and effort. It often requires letting a strong itch—the yearning to immediately do something, anything, about whatever just happened—be there without scratching it. But, like most things that require effort, responding also tends to be advantageous.

The difference between the 2Ps and the 4Ps:

Reactions tend to go like this: Something happens. You panic. Then you proceed.

Responses tend to go like this: Something happens. You pause. You process. You plan. And only then do you proceed.

You rarely regret deliberately responding to a challenging situation. You often regret automatically reacting to one.

A key tool to help you in this process: “affect labeling”

In a series of studies out of UCLA, researchers subjected participants to unplanned and distressing situations, such as giving impromptu speeches in front of strangers. Half the participants were instructed to label their emotions. For instance, “I feel tightness in my chest,” “I feel angst in my throat,” or “I feel heat in my palms.” The other half were not instructed to do anything special.

The participants who felt and labeled their emotions, what researchers call affect labeling, had significantly less stress and felt more at ease during their speeches.

While it might seem that owning your insecurity would give it more power, it’s the opposite. When you identify your emotions—especially the negative ones—it lessens the likelihood that the emotion will control you. It switches you out of being fused with your emotion (reaction mode) and into a more thoughtful state (responsive mode). You go from being caught up in the storm to observing the storm. You give yourself a few degrees of freedom, and in that freedom lies your agency to make a choice about what comes next.

Bringing it together

Whether it is unexpected traffic, a meeting that didn’t go to plan, missing an aid-station in your marathon, a bad strike in the batter’s box, a dog having diarrhea when you are rushing out the door, a leak in your kitchen, a disagreement with your spouse or colleague, or something far more significant, you can call on the 4 P’s to get you out of reactivity and into responsiveness:

1. Pause: Take a deep breath or two. Gather yourself.

2. Process: Label the emotions you are feeling. Tell yourself, This is what is happening right now, I’m doing the best that I can.

3. Plan: Now that you’ve collected yourself, make a plan for what you want to do going forward. Figure out what resources and skills you can bring to the situation at hand.

4. Proceed: Only then take action and proceed.

You can use this system in specific moments (e.g., a bad rep in your workout, a missed jump-shot, a toddler refusing to go out the door); you can also use it for more lasting challenges (e.g., a hard-to-work-with boss, an obstacle in a relationship, navigating an illness or injury). The formula is the same, the only thing that changes is the time horizon. You can respond not react in a matter of seconds. You can respond not react over the course of a year.

What tends to happen is that the more you practice responding instead of reacting not only do you start making better decisions but you also start to experience a part of yourself that is not so susceptible to chaos, at least not in the way you usually experience it. It’s the part of you that pauses, processes, plans, and proceeds. The part of you that is akin to the canvas upon which the content of your life is painted.

It’s a good part of yourself to be in touch with. It’s the core of inner strength and stability.

Beware of your surroundings

In 1964, the Canadian communication theorist Marshall McLuhan opened his book The Extensions of Man by writing, “The medium is the message.” He went on to explain that “the personal and social consequences of any medium—that is, of any extension of ourselves—result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology.” In other words, the more we use or consume a given technological medium, the more we come to represent it in our daily actions, or in this case, reactions.

Social media in particular is an inherently reactive medium, dominated by decontextualized hot takes and people yelling back and forth at one another. Nearly everything about social media teaches you to react instead of respond. Commentators are given a limited number of characters to make a point. People post their immediate thoughts, with little to no time for reflection. Moreover, research shows the factor that contributes most to the odds of a post going viral: the amount of outrage it stokes.

Brain science shows neurons that fire together wire together. The more you engage in certain patterns of thinking, feeling, and acting, the stronger those patterns become. It’s as true for reactivity as anything.

Fortunately, there are plenty of other mediums available that build up one’s capacity to respond. A few examples include reading a book, having a distraction-free discussion with other people, or, if you are going to be on the internet, reading longer-form writing.

The 2P’s versus 4P’s heuristic helps. You can always ask yourself, Does this medium incentivize panicking and pummeling ahead or does it encourage me to pause, process, plan, and proceed? If you are swimming in a sea of reactivity then it is inevitable that you, too, will become a reactionary kind of person. If, however, you surround yourself with responsiveness, then you, too, are liable to become that kind of person.

It’s a high-stakes decision. We all should do our best to make the right one.