When someone says something hurtful to you, your normal reaction might be to snap back and say something unkind back to them.
It’s usually an automatic response.
You get hurt. You snap back.
The untrained mind runs on autopilot, blindly reacting to the world around you, meaning that whenever you’re in a situation where someone is mean to you, you always respond the same way.
In the example above ^^ – snapping back, because the emotion has taken over, rather than you being in control of how YOU wish to respond to the emotion.
What a meditation practice helps you do, is to create a space internally between the emotion you’re experiencing and the reaction you have.
When you develop self-awareness through practising meditation regularly, you’re able to quickly notice when you’re getting angry or upset.
And it’s in that brief moment of awareness – what I call the crossroads – that you become aware that you don’t have to simply react to what you’re experiencing and you can choose a different action to take instead.
Instead of snapping back (your automated response to being triggered), you might get curious about why that person was saying hurtful things to you, opening up a dialogue.
Maybe you take a brief moment to reflect on what that person said, perhaps realising they were being hurtful because of something you said or did, so you apologise for your behaviour.
Another option is that you sit with anger or hurt you’re experiencing for a few moments. You observe the emotions that arise (the thoughts, the physical sensations), allowing them time and space to pass through you until their gone.
In the future, rather than reacting to every challenging emotion that arises, your meditation practice provides you with the skill and ability to choose a different, more intentional path for you to take.
Meditation won’t give you control over what happens around you, but it does give you control of how you wish to respond.
Joe : )
Interested in learning how to meditate?