Hi, and Good morning. Welcome to five days to your impact. So Nancy Campbell here with day two, which is react versus respond. So with react versus respond, let's differentiate, differentiate the two. And so when we react, were often responding with our emotions were emotional responding to a situation or some sort of communication. So that's reacting.

And often that's what's felt our emotion, not actual words. And then responding is a measured, thought out response. It's when we think about something. We measure our response and we give our response and we don't have to give it straightaway. Listening is the key to responding quickly When we react, we're bringing our emotions if we've had a bad day, a stressful day, if we're annoyed at something, or even tired, we can react, it's very easy to react in. In those situations, we all do it from time to time.

It's just, it happens so easily. And then the person who's bringing us the situation, the communication, they often just get our emotions. We can give them our words, whatever, you know, whatever we're saying. But often they just get our like, annoyance or stress. And of course, say respond to that. And then before we know it, we're down this road of an argument or some someplace we really didn't want to go.

Because our forward emotion has come through. We've just reacted And that person felt their emotion and ever reacted to that. and on it goes. And there's no empathy or sympathy or there's no there's not even really a lot of listening going on it's or just reacting from everything happening emotionally. And so the situation can only go down this path of, you know, all these emotional reactions. And when we respond, Senate's reacting, so when we respond, we're actually the first thing we're doing is listening.

So two measured form of listening. So the first thing is to listen. And then sometimes when we're listening, we can get that far we can just listen and we think are going to say something. So I know I've been through this and I can tell you a lot about it Ah, and a good thing to do is Just to breathe. I say to myself, I've just got to breathe because we these situations come up, you know a lot. And we just want to jump in.

And so I tell myself, just breathe. Listen, angry. Listen and breathe. I don't know what's coming up next. Listen and breathe. And just feel your breath, in and out.

And sometimes that will that is the best place to start listening, listening and breathing because we are one we're going to want to jump right in. But if we just listen, and we give ourselves and the other person, a bit of space, it gives the situation and the communication, some space. So in that space, anything can happen. We don't know what's going to happen. Anything can be said. We don't know what's going to be sitting But if we give that space and just listen, and breathe, and then we can add in listening with our heart, so we can listen with empathy and sympathy.

And I talked about in the mini lesson, taking ourselves out of the equation. How do you take yourself out of the equation? Because it's a very effective way to listen. And what that means is that we are just listening to the facts, actually. We're just taking the effects of what someone's telling us or the situation and looking at the bigger picture, through those eyes of looking at the facts. And it's a pretty sure way of knowing what you're going to do or what you got to say, Are you going to say something now I'm going to say something in the future.

That's a measured response that it takes itself out of the equation, you can come back later, or at the end of the conversation, give them measured response, something where you've taken the fact looked at the bigger picture, and have given and then you can give a measured response. So this all comes with practice. And the very first thing to do is just to listen, back I have on the worksheet. So, you know, when we're listening, we can always ask ourselves when someone brings us something, do when I do I need to solve this problem, or do I need to listen? Do I need to be right in this situation? Or do I need to listen?

Right? Do I need to give my opinion here? Or do I need to listen? And if we can just listen and breathe? Listen with an open heart some sympathy and empathy. empowerment can come into being.

Because when we're listening this way, we are empowering ourselves. We're not getting caught up, we are balancing things out. We're coming from empowerment. So when we respond, we're coming from empowerment when we react. It's like quickly jumping into a car, and you're just going back and forth and back and forth. And you don't know where you're going.

You don't know what road you're gonna end up on. When we're coming from empowerment. We're actually in the driver's seat. We can see where this is going to go. We're going to give that give ourselves a bit of time inspect to see where this is going to go. Ask yourself those questions.

Do I? What do I need to do here? Well, I'll just listen for a while. Give this a bit of space in time. And then I'll say what I need to do. I won't let My emotions, you don't have to let your emotions Run, run with you.

You can be empowered. And you can make the choices. It's up to you. This is another way where you can foster your own empowerment with your listening skills, listen, and bring, connect to your empowerment. Give the situation give the communication, some sort of space and time. So you can have a measured response.

And the other person can feel they can feel heard. They'll feel heard. And, you know, sometimes people just say, Oh, I just wanted someone to listen. Thanks for listening. And you think, wow, I had all these solutions for you. And it's happened to me people say, say that and you think she I think this is the news.

All you wanted was someone to listen, to listen. So listening is key listening, and breathing. Just start there, listen and breathe, and then bring in some sympathy and empathy. take yourself out of the picture, which is really effective. And that's where your empowerment comes in. When you take yourself out of the picture, when you look at the facts of what someone's bringing you what the situation is, and look at the bigger picture.

That's your impairment. You're taking yourself out of the equation, meaning you're not getting emotionally entangled in the situation. Because once we give our emotions, emotions come back and it becomes very emotive and it can go anywhere it becomes quite unpredictable. Once giving our emotions and receiving other emotions, fi comes up particularly if we're a bit annoyed at something if we're tired, if we've had a long day for stress, if we're stressed, things can become unpredictable. And it's really important to listen at those times and sometimes it's the hardest time to just listen. But just practice this and breathe in guess give yourself two prompts.

I'm just gonna listen to scanner, we're just gonna listen to scatterbrain. And you'll find yourself being able to get there time and time again. Then you can bring in the other elements of looking at the bigger picture. Just looking at the bigger picture, taking yourself out of the equation, bringing in your empowerment so with this technique, You can use it over and over again. And sometimes we like we all jump in, sometimes in regret it. That's like that happens.

There's always next time, always next time I can listen, and I can breathe, and I can use my empowerment, I can be empowered. Next time someone brings me a compensation or some news and opinion whatever it is, I can be standing in my empowerment when I'm listening. That's rather short lesson today. But that's basically what it is. It's not reacting but responding and how to take yourself out of the equation and bring in your empowerment. So tomorrow, we're going to move into gratitude.

So not just like ordinary gratitude, how to practice in a daily lives during the day without having to like, like write in a journal every 10 minutes or something like that, how to bring in the gratitude in our daily lives. So hope you can join me then. And all the worksheets I have for you. You can use them time and time again. They're like a resource for you to keep. And you can refer to them over and over again.

So, hope you practice and any comments, any questions. You can email me any questions, put in any comments or we will get back to you. And, again, if you want me to answer personally, that's fine. People do I know and, or if you want to, you know sometimes questions if we have a question. It does relate to what other people are thinking as well. So I can answer them here for you as well.

So thank you very much. So we're gonna listen, and we're gonna bring, and we're going to take ourselves out of the equation and bring our empowerment in. Okay. Thanks very much, everyone. I'll see you next time.