High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 46: Respond Not React

Episode Date: May 15, 2016

In this bestselling book, A Man's Search for Meaning, Victor Frankl wrote: “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space lies our freedom and power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom.” In this episode, Cindra talks about how to respond not react and shares a strategy called the Power Response Strategy. She talks about how responding not reacting applies to sport, business and life and allows us to be at our best more often. We'd love for you to share the podcast with your friends and connect with Cindra at [e-mail] or on Twitter @Mentally_Strong.

Welcome to High Performance Mindset with Dr. Sindra Kampoff. Do you want to reach your full potential, live a life of passion, go after your dreams? Each week we bring you strategies and interviews to help you ignite your mindset. Let's bring on Sindra. Welcome to the High Performance Mindset Podcast. This is your host, Sindra Kampoff. Thanks so much for joining me here today. I always appreciate hearing from you. And today I'd like to start with an iTunes review. So Ken Julian says, really, really enjoy the show. Tons of depth and insight regarding mindset and performance. Thanks for pushing us.

You bet, Kent, and thanks so much for your comment. I really appreciate that. And if you have a few minutes, I'd love for you to go over to iTunes, make a comment there, or give us a star rating. When you do that, that allows us to reach more people, and more people get some positive strategies that will help them improve their lives and help them improve their performance to allow them to be the best they can be. So I always appreciate hearing when you share the podcast episodes or when you retweet messages or shoot me an email. I always really appreciate that. So I just want to thank you very much. And you can send me a tweet at mentally underscore strong with what stood out to you about this episode

today or as always you can send me an email at cindra at cindracampoff.com. I always love hearing from you and connecting with you. So today we are going to talk about how to respond not react and I'd like to start with a quote by Viktor Frankl. He wrote this in Man's Search for Meaning. Between the stimulus and response, there is a space. And in that space lies our freedom and power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom. Now in his best-selling book, A Man's Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl describes his experiences at a concentration camp.

He was an inmate there during the Holocaust, and Viktor Frankl was a neurologist and psychiatrist. Now this book is named one of the top 10 most influential books in the United States, and in it he describes how we interpret moments of difficulty, and our reaction to the stimulus. Again, he says there's space between the stimulus and response reaction. But we often react in knee-jerking ways, with heightened anxiety, fear, guilt, doubt, believing that things make us feel a certain way. We react without thinking thinking and we too easily accept our reflexive reactions. We don't always see that we choose our response but when we choose to respond we act with purpose and intention. So what it

means to have space between the stimulus and response. It means that we can pause and we can choose to respond not react. And Frankl describes that when we do this we learn to grow and change. We are in control and can increase the space and make make use of the space. When we do this we're less likely to have our buttons pushed and become more aware of our thoughts and our feelings and our actions in the moment. And we give ourselves control over our reactions and our response. That allows us to have greater choice and freedom when we work to increase the space. We can choose to respond, not react. Now, I work with a lot of elite athletes,

championship teams, and the stimulus that I see happening in sport is a call by an official we think is bad, or a comment by a coach that we perceive as rude, or a fan that's yelling your name as you shoot a free throw. Or for pro athletes, I see haters on Twitter or social media. Comments on Twitter that are rude, right, that might be our stimulus. In life, the stimulus could be your child throwing a tantrum, or a family member that just rudely doesn't shop for a family get-together, even though you expect them to be there, or a person who cuts you off in traffic. That's the stimulus. In business, the stimulus, and what this quote emphasizes is that we can control our rate,

might be a complaint that comes in about your business, or an employee that's chronically late. I'd encourage you to think about the things that frustrate you or what do you react to instead of respond. I've been really working on the strategy that I'm going to share with you in a few minutes and I do this in a lot of different ways. I do it when interacting with my two boys. I have two boys, Carter and Blake. They're ages seven and nine, and I really work to choose how to respond with them. Maybe there's something that they get really frustrated about, and so I choose to take some control over my space between the statements and response

so I can stay in control as their mother. I do this in my running. I'm a marathoner and yesterday I was running a half marathon. I started in fifth and at the beginning of the race was really tough for me. I haven't raced since December so I think it was just kind of hard for my body just to get used to it, the fast pace of racing again. And I really worked to control my response. I worked to control my breathing. And I said several power statements, which I'm going to describe to you today. So I use this response or I use this strategy often. All right, the strategy that I want to share with you to increase your space between the stimulus and response is what I'm calling the power response

strategy. And I'm writing about this in my book right now that should be out in the fall. And so the first part of the power response strategy is to take a power breath. Now a power breath only needs to take about 15 seconds. And what you should do in your power breath is focus on your breathing and work to slowly breathe in for six seconds, hold it for two seconds, and breathe out for seven seconds. Now you can take multiple power breaths if you need to, to stay calm, cool, and under control. And the power breath, what it does, it allows you to stay in control of your response. So you really think about how you'd like to respond and you can increase the space between the stimulus and response. Now the second part of the power response strategy is to use a

power phrase. And that power phrase can start with I will, I can, or I am. Maybe you can say something like I am in control of myself and my reactions or I stay calm despite things that happen around me. When you choose to use the power response strategy where you have a power breath paired with a power phrase, that gives you power friends, because you are ready to respond, not react, and you can respond in a purposeful way. Because my friends, high performers, those who work to reach their greater potential, they do not react, they respond. They increase and make use of the space between the stimulus and response to stay cool, calm, and collected. They use this strategy to choose to respond with purpose and intention. And today I'm going to end with an affirmation. You can find it

on my Twitter page at mentally underscore strong or on the show notes page. You can go to cindracampoff.com and go under the podcast link and you can find it here feel free to print it off share it do whatever you'd like with this this affirmation quote here we go i choose to respond with purpose and intention i put space between the stimulus and response to stay calm collected and in control i respond not react as, hope this podcast was helpful and this message was helpful for you today. We'd love to hear what's it out to you. You can shoot me an email at cindra at cindracampoff.com. Make it an outstanding day, my friends, and be mentally strong.

Thank you for listening to High Performance Mindset. If you like today's podcast, make a comment, share it with a friend, and join the conversation on Twitter at Mentally Underscore Strong. For more inspiration and to receive Sindra's free weekly videos, check out DrSindra.com.