Your Response Matters

4 years ago
Written by Alex Sipala
Category Incident Response | Company News | Inspiration

When times get tough, and they do, when you believe everything is out of your control and you feel your world going in a downward spiral, it is difficult to believe that we can still take control of life and change the outcomes we are experiencing.

Whether it is the Corona Virus (COVIID19), a job loss, business downturn, loss of loved one or financial crisis. Regardless of how bad it may appear on the surface, there are still 3 areas we can control which have a direct effect on how the outcome will affect us.

Three Areas You Can Control

By exercising control over these 3 responses we change the outcome in our favour regardless of the circumstance surrounding us.

The 3 areas we each have control over in any situation or circumstance are:

1️⃣ Our behaviour (including what we say and how we say it)

2️⃣ Our thoughts (self-talk) and beliefs (both conscious and unconscious)

3️⃣ Our visual representation (including our images of the future)

Every outcome we experience in life today is a direct result of how we’ve responded to an earlier event or events in our life previously. We continue to repeat over and over until we reach a situation where our response no longer serves us as it has done before.

The Conditioned Response

Picture a 9-year-old girl, when they don’t get what they want, they stomp off sulking and they run to Mum or Dad. When this behaviour is first experienced by the “caring parent/s”, they immediately inquire as to what has caused this. They find the other siblings have apparently caused it. The parent interjects and gives the 8-year-old what they want, much to the disgust of her siblings.

This now becomes a “conditioned response” for both the 9-year-old and the other siblings. If you don’t get what you want, just sulk and stomp, and you’ll get it. This just happened in my own home today. Now, this response (justified as it may be) may work for a child but, as an adult, it will have a very limited effect, although sometimes we find ourselves as adults doing this very thing.

The question we need to ask ourselves is “howzit working for ya”? If it's not working maybe we need to find a new response.

The Corona Virus & Your Business

Let’s use the current Corona Virus Pandemic as an example:

You’re a business owner and you have been told you must cease trading immediately. You have many staff and their families who rely on you for their pay. They say we need to hibernate our business for at least six months!

I don’t know about you, but my first question was “how are we going to survive”?.

This is no regular hibernation; what does that even mean? We cannot choose to visit family and friends we must remain at home. The business will surely close, how will I feed the family what about the home and car payments.

Blaming Won't Make It Better

Our initial response is to blame the circumstances (like the 9-year-old above) for our current outcome. In other words, we blame the virus, the economy, the government, the Chinese and all global leaders for the situation.

We can focus on the loss of our liberty, our business/job, our ability to freely choose. We can continue to focus on what we have lost due to the virus.

Every minute we get deeper and deeper upset with the looming losses and the losses appear to get bigger and bigger. We start to spiral out of control! But, we have a growing desire to have to blame someone else, somewhere else so we can feel better, but we don’t, we end up feeling bitter and more and more depressed... So what can we do?

Examine Your Power To Make A Difference

There are 3 responses we each have control over which can control and change our future and the future outcome of the virus:

1️⃣ Our behaviour (including what we say and how we say it)

2️⃣ Our thoughts (self-talk) and beliefs (both conscious and unconscious)

3️⃣ Our visual representation (including our images of the future)

What this means is that we can change our thinking, change our communication, change the picture of our future. All this leads to a new outcome.

Rather than focussing on the Corona Virus and the global response, we can examine what is within our power to make a difference to ourselves and our social network.

Take Positive Action

Obviously, Social Distancing is something we can do to create a different outcome for our nation.

We can remain positive of a bright future when all this is over and it will be over.

▶️ You can spend some great time with your loved ones really connecting physically, emotionally and building unbreakable family bonds.

▶️ You could spend time writing your story of how you’ve responded through the crisis.

▶️ You could record a positive message for someone else you know may be struggling.

▶️ You could also write a list of all the things you are still grateful for.

▶️ Call the people you know you should talk to, you may not be able to visit but you can still talk.

Life as we know it is changing but remember this, change is always a bad thing. After the initial disruption is over we will begin to see the changes can have a real positive effect for our future.

At the end of the day, when we look back on these circumstances which have changed our way of life and we will be able to identify those people who have succeeded in changing thereby rising above the circumstances and, those who did not.

The tell-tale signs between the two groups of people are that successful people take responsibility for what they can do, can change, can control and, as a result, their lives will improve, and so too will the lives of others around them.

Your response really matters.

Alex

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