How Can I Walk My Talk More?

I am a really nice, peace-loving, spiritual person at heart, yet sometimes I catch myself reacting in a less than evolved fashion in different life situations.  For example, I get so angry when I encounter bad drivers or people who clearly have no regard for others, and my tendency is to get angry and sometimes even rude, steaming about it for sometimes days afterwards. At the same time I see myself reacting in such ways, I know that it is not who I really am.  How can I walk my talk more, and keep my cool in situations that evoke such instant anger?

Martha, Los Angeles

Dear Martha,

First of all, good for you for being aware of a behavior of yours that is not in alignment with who you really are – a lot of people don’t ever even get to that point!  I have got a lovely exercise for you to try, one that I found in the CWG Book 1 Guidebook years ago and that I use with pretty much all of my clients at some point.  Rest assured that this challenge is not unique to you, we all at some point in our lives show up as “less than evolved”, or react harshly to certain situations life throws our way, some of us more than others.   The trick is to not react, but to instead act on it; in other words, decide ahead of time what your new reaction will be.  And there’s a fun and easy way to do this:

~ Take out a piece of paper and draw 3 vertical columns.  Title the first column, “Situations That Commonly Occur”, the second column, “My Usual Reaction to It”, and the third column, “My New Reaction”.

~ List as many situations you can think of where you find yourself reacting in a way that you don’t like, identifying your usual reaction to it, and then choosing your new reaction, or how you’d like to show up when that situation arises.

~ Finally, put it into practice!  The next time you find yourself in one of the situations you’ve identified, choose your new reaction!

So much of what we experience in life simply calls for awareness and a small turning of our attention, and making conscious choices.  You’ve already got the awareness and attention part down here, now you can enjoy making a conscious new choice based on who you really are, and in my humble opinion, there is no greater joy.

Now, while I’ve found this exercise to be extremely useful in my clients’ lives as well as my own, it does not account for every situation.  For example, if you’ve got some deep-rooted emotions connected to some of your “usual reactions”, it may serve you to speak with a professional about it, process what you need to process, and finish your unfinished business.  But for many of our daily experiences, habits and patterns, this exercise works like a charm, and begins assisting you in creating more and more experiences that you can be happy with and proud of.  Enjoy!

(Nova Wightman is a CWG Life Coach, as well as the owner and operator of Go Within Life Coaching, www.gowithincoaching.com, specializing in helping individuals blend their spirituality with their humanity in a way that makes life more enjoyable, easy, and fulfilling.  She can be reached at Nova@theglobalconversation.com. )

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