I have to tell myself this every
day, and sometimes it doesn’t happen.
This is advice, take it or leave it.
Speaking from my experience with life, this also is very difficult. I have found that, as a lowly human being,
doing this one thing could have saved me a lot of heartache and grief. Sometimes, you only need to think for a brief
time; sometimes it takes more time to consider all the options, sometimes you
just need to remove yourself from the stimuli or situation that will influence
you to make a hasty decision. Email is a
great example. Email is very
impersonal. We cannot pick up on “clues”
for the nuances of meaning in speech from an email or posting on a message
board. Human expression is complex, and
if it is not in person, there are some clues that you are missing (i.e. body
language, tone, force, inflection). It
could change the meaning of the message altogether. The message might even be totally opposite
from how it reads at face value. So just
take a minute, maybe more before you hit “send.” Whether you are talking to someone face to
face or not, this is a valuable tool and you do not have to special training to
do this.
Sometimes, we have to make split
second decisions, especially if it is a life threatening situation. Thankfully for the majority of us, we are not
in those situations on a daily basis.
The people who are in those positions have been trained to react, and to
react immediately without having to think.
A simplistic example of this,
that most all people have participated in, is a fire drill at a school. We are taught to exit the building in a safe
manner and assemble in a safe location.
Granted, that is a simplistic example, but it is an example of making a
split second decision, and we have all been trained how to do that without
thinking.
No comments:
Post a Comment