How to Respond, Not React

Did you know that it is so much better to respond when things happen in your life that you don't expect than to react to things that happen in your life that you don't expect?

It is.

It's better. It's true. Let's talk about it. Hi, my name is Chrystal Hurst. I'm glad you found your way to me today. Listen, if you are not subscribed to my YouTube channel or if you're not following me on Facebook, do that right now. Why? Because I'm regularly putting out videos that I hope encourage you to live your life well. And occasionally I go live, and if you are subscribed on YouTube or following me on Facebook, you won't miss any of the goodness. Today I want to talk to you about what it looks like to learn to respond and not to react. I, uh, recently— I say recently, it's been over a year— we had Texas winter storms in our area, and not only did we lose power, but like so many other people in the area, we had a pipe burst. Here it is over a year later, and I still have holes in my walls. I still have wood floors that are buckling. I still have ceilings that have to be ripped out and redone because of water damage. And we are almost on the edge of starting those, um, starting those repairs. But I have to tell you, in the moment that the water burst, I heard the pipe burst. I was sitting at my kitchen table. It sounded like the static from a radio, and then I realized this is water running. I've never had a pipe burst before, so I had nothing to compare that experience with, that sound to. But I quickly knew one thing: that I needed to respond and react by turning off the water. The problem is I didn't know where the water shutoff valve was, so I went outside in the snow with socks on, running around looking for it, desperately talking to my husband who was not at home to ask him where it was. He didn't know where it was either, so I ran around in the yard for about 10 minutes looking at all the possible places while the water was running into my home. I also called the previous homeowner, who— she and I are friends— and I did not get an answer initially. But eventually she called me back, told me where it was. I had to go on the side of the house, dig in the dirt, dig through the snow, find the shutoff valve, and shut it off. In the moment, I was both reacting and responding. I could feel the anxiety in my heart, but I had the thought in my head that there was something that I needed to focus on finding so that I could fix the problem. Later, I walked into my bedroom and walked into my closet, and I totally reacted. I literally yelled to the top of my lungs. I called my sister, and every emotion, every feeling that I kept under wraps while I was focusing on finding the water valve came out. Here's what I learned from that. While I was in my closet screaming at the top of my lungs, saying some things that weren't very nice, my children could still hear me. And even in that reaction, I think later when I opened the door and saw them standing right there, I thought, oh girl, you should have— you should have tried to keep that a little bit more under wraps. How many times have you reacted and felt that way? I shouldn't have said that. I shouldn't have said that then. I shouldn't have taken this, uh, this action or made this decision. I should have— I shouldn't have had this look on my face. I shouldn't have made this decision so quickly. That is the problem with reaction. It normally results in regret because we don't think. We're only operating out of emotion, the overflow of all of the anxieties or fears or excitement. And so we say things we don't mean, or we say things that we do mean in ways that we don't process. And in the process of just releasing whatever needs to be said or doing whatever we want to do, we leave regret in our wake. Of course, recently we all know about what happened at the Oscars, and we're all sick of talking about it, but that is pure reaction. Will was reaction. Chris was response. That was the greatest night in the history of television.

Okay. Okay.

There is a difference. It doesn't mean that you don't feel, it just means what you choose to do based on the feeling is different. It is so very important for you and I to learn how to respond and not react. Now, reaction is not bad. If you put your hand on a hot stove, you need to react. You want your system to tell you, don't touch that. If you are dating the wrong man, you need to react the moment that he says or does something that indicates to you that he might be a little crazy, you need to react and you need to get out of the building, get out of the house, get out of the car, whatever. There are times when, yes, your, your system, your nervous system, your, your limbic brain, your lizard brain, so as we call it, the part of you that's designed to survive— reaction is important. If you hear something rustling in the woods and you feel like it's headed your way, you need to react and run.

You need to run.

There are times when reaction is exactly what you need. I'm not talking about good reaction. I'm talking about the reaction that leads to regret and you having the bandwidth to process that when needed. How do you respond and not react? Well, the first thing is you need to understand the difference between responding and reacting. Often reaction is gonna have a negative impact, a negative impact to you or those around you, whereas response, even if it's a negative situation, can leave you with the opportunity to leave a positive taste on the circumstances. I think about, uh, my babies learning to walk. When they fall, my reaction would be like, "Oh no!" Right? And then the baby reads that reaction as a negative response to what happened and they start crying. Or you respond to a baby learning to walk and you say when they fall, "Good job, good job!" And they look up at you and because they're getting positive reinforcement, they don't read your response, your reaction, as something that is wrong. They read it as, This is a part of it. Get up and keep going. So you can see something happen that it gives you an initial feeling of, ah, and choose in that moment to overcome that reaction with a positive response. That often is the difference. Another difference is that reaction is often the thermometer that reads the room and just tells you what's happening. Response is a thermostat that sets the temperature in the room. You decide what it will be because you bring the energy and temperature with you. This is why it's so important to be grounded. It's so important for you to know who you are when you walk into the room, for you not to be swept up by the chaos, swept up by the gossip, swept up by the madness, swept up by the immaturity. That you can bring the maturity to the room and know who you are when you step in the building and bring the joy and bring the peace and bring the understanding and bring the rhythm. This is why motherhood is so important, because you get to set the temperature in your home. Hey, you ever heard that saying, if mama ain't happy, no Nobody's happy. It's true. When you are in a place of overflow, when you are in a place where your needs are met, you are able then to better meet the needs of other people in your home. And when you're able to do that— not that it's all on you, but you can maneuver things in your home in a way that other people are settled and satisfied, loved and cared for. And then they have the opportunity to be their best people too. This is why it's so important to be a good leader, because when you are settled and confident in who you are and what you need to be in the space when there is chaos that erupts, when there are changes in the organization, or maybe there's a loss of expectation because you weren't able to launch a product or able to accomplish something that the team was really looking forward to. When you come in the room and you are able to set this thermostat, you stop everybody else from reacting and being thermometers to whatever changed. The reason why I love to set my thermostat and say, here is the high and the low, it's on auto. When it goes too low, turn on the heat. When it goes too high, turn on the air, is because the temperature changes outside.. And when the temperature changes outside, I don't want that temperature to be reflective on the inside of our office building. I want the thermostat to decide what the temperature always is. That's what you get to do when you decide to bring response and not reaction. Reaction is often nature versus nurture. It is out of physicality and not out of cultivation. It is out of your knee-jerk and not out of your thoughtfulness. Often it's hard to respond and not react if you've never seen someone else respond, and to learn what does it look like for someone to bring grace and maturity in a room. Trust me, I've had my moments where I just want to say and do what I want to say and do, and I'd be lying if that has not often been the case. Sometimes this little mouth of mine doesn't necessarily let it shine, but what nurture has done— me having the opportunity to watch many mature women in the faith, to watch my grandmother, to watch my mother— and to know that even when the tongue is giving you a lashing, you may not know it until you turn around and leave the room, because it was given to you with a smile, with a calm voice, with encouragement, with a stamp of approval on your person. Even if I cannot stamp of approval on your particular action of persuasion, but I can still leave you whole and intact, because I've seen that done. I can operate out of response and nurture and not just nature, how that made me feel. Because listen, I can roll my neck just like the other person can, and I can say what I need to say when I need to say it. But if I don't choose to respond out of nurture and only out of nature, the words that I put out into the world in reactionary mode may not be the words that I want to be known for. Reaction is often instantaneous, where response means you usually need to take some time away to think about it. It's always better to be slow to speak and quick to listen. It's always better to give yourself some room to process, and not to process necessarily internally, to process with other people, to get other wisdom, to get other perspectives, because your perspective on a situation may not be the right one. You're in your skin and you know how you feel. Often this is why therapy is important. This is why coaching is important. This is why community is important. This is why prayer is important. Because you cannot just process all the time what you've seen or experienced through you. You need to hold what you've seen and experienced in the larger picture of other things that are going on outside of you, and that takes time. So if you have a quick response, unless, unless it is a response to danger, take time. Take time to think about it, because remember I said all reaction is not bad. You were designed to react for your safety, for your survival. It's just that your emotions, as my dad often says, they don't have intellect. And sometimes intellect, when intellect enters the building, that's what actually helps you to make better long-term decisions that are not only a blessing to you, but they're a blessing to the other people that are in your world. So take time to think through responses, and don't think through your responses in a vacuum. Process with safe places, process with the Lord, process with friends, process with your counselor, with your coach. You'll know the right answer. You'll know. It'll rise up out of your soul, not necessarily from your heart, because the Bible says in Jeremiah that the heart is deceitful above all things, but from your soul, because your spirit and the Spirit of God informs your soul. And you're able to then take a deep knowing that God gave you and put that with the deep knowing of the Holy Spirit and arrive at a conclusion that is good or at least best for all. So instantaneous reactions, especially when it is in a negative response, is usually not the right one. Reaction is usually destructive and not constructive. A response allows you to take the time to see something from all angles and then to decide, how do I actually want to approach this? My youngest son broke his arm once and Usually, if I go quiet on you, it's because I am responding, not reacting. Because I have all the thoughts and opinions all the time. My son was not with me when he broke his arm. And so the person who was with my children called me and said, "Chrystal, I think you're gonna have to come and get Joel. I think he broke his arm. Would you like for me to take him to the emergency room? Your husband isn't here." And so, my husband was closer than I was. He got to him first. We decided to meet at one of those neighborhood care centers, which I don't think I'll ever go to one of those again, but that's neither here nor there. All this money, and then they still send you to the real hospital. But when I got there, my husband had arrived at that care center at the same time that I had arrived. My son got out the car and his arm was just dangling at his side. And in that moment, My reaction would've been destructive.

Oh my God.

It's like the baby walking. It would've been destructive to his emotions. It would've been destructive to his outlook. He already was feeling fear. What he needed was support and construction. So I said, it's okay, Joel. They'll put your arm back together. It's okay. He said, Mom, I can't feel my arm. And I said, it's okay. Let's go inside and let the doctors do what they do. This is what doctors are for. While all the turmoil on the inside of my heart and on my soul wanted to scream, and I wanted to call the loving person who I love dearly, who was with my children, and said, why did you let them do that?

Why did you even let them swing from that monkey bar in the house? Why were you letting them leap from a stool onto an area that was covered with tile? Why? Why?

Well, because often the things in life that we have to respond or to react to, we weren't intending for those to go wrong. We don't live life intending for things to go wrong. So response ingests the idea that there is something good to find because the intention was not wrong. This is why you want to bring response to your relationships and bring response to your friendships and be responses, uh, bring response to work. Because typically, I mean, there are people who can be side-eyed and construed and, you know, very vicious and undercover and covert, but often people are usually operating from a sense of survival. How they can get the job done, how they can make sure they keep their job, how they can make sure that they get credit for a job well done because they want a promotion. Often there are reasons not just straight out of this viscosity. If I just made up that word, I was trying to say viciousness, but I didn't know the viciousness was gonna work either. But y'all know what I mean. Y'all know what I mean. Sometimes they do, and you want to be wise and know the difference, but you're normally not going to be operating out of wisdom when you're reacting. Always look for the constructive angle, even if you have to speak truth, even if you have to create boundaries, even if you have to make decisions, even if decisions give birth to separation. I think about this in marriages. You can be constructive about your spouse, leave them intact for the sake— your own sake, because you chose them, or else you're going to go through the rest of your life thinking, I suck at decision making. Or you can just say, that was the best decision that I knew to make at that time. I've learned you want to be constructive for the sake of your children if children are involved, because it doesn't do you any good or them any good for you to tear down their father. That's a whole nother topic for another day. When you separate, I remember someone in that I heard my mother talk about, she said she learned years ago, she said when people in the organization are changing, you can let people leave whole, even if they did a terrible job, even if they're leaving terribly, you can let people leave whole. You can always find something constructive to say. And so regardless of what the circumstances are around separation, be constructive. Don't react. Don't think first about how their departure leaves you, how their infidelity leaves you. Think first. I'm not saying don't deal with that. I'm just saying think first. What have you learned? Have you failed forward? What will be different the next time? Who have you become? That's response. Again, if he hits you, react, get out. But often the things that we are losing our minds about, y'all, are things that have gotten under our skin, things that are driving us crazy, things that we wish somebody would stop doing.

Quit it!

Stop it right now, you know. But if you can pause and think, what is construct— how can I be constructive here? How can I respond and speak out of overflow of God's goodness to me and not have reaction out of a survivor's mentality or out of lack or scarcity? If I believe that God is the God of abundance, then he will take care of me. He will provide. He will make up the difference. He will make the crooked path straight. Reaction is often short-term. It does not have a long-term view. You know, I think about the reality that there are so many times in my life where I've been disappointed, but I've been disappointed because all I'm seeing is what is right now in the short term, how it feels bad right now. Response says that long-term things get better, things can turn up, things can change.. And if you only look at the short term, you'll always be jacked. I ask some of the interns about their experience with response and emotion. And one of the girls said, every parent that I know that's ever been to a kid's sports game, soccer or baseball, they know what the difference is between reaction or response, because if they don't do it, another parent does it. A parent will lose it with the ref. Parents They're cussing out their kids, they're cussing out everybody else's kids. It's totally reactionary and it's totally destructive.

These are kids, these are kids.

Response, thoughtful words, thoughtful approach is much, much more constructive. So reaction is usually going to be quick, response is usually going to take time. Now there is something in the middle of reacting and responding. And that's retreating. Retreating can be good or bad. Retreating says, "I'm going to hide until I figure this out." The time in between your reactionary response and your responsive response is time that you can take to think, process, and curate your words. That's a good kind of retreating. "I'll get back with you later. Can I take a moment to think about it?" Um, I want to write some things down and pray about it and get back with you. The kind of retreating, however, where you just disappear off the map without words, where you don't communicate your thoughts and your intentions, where the people that are a part of the experience with you don't know where you stand— that kind of retreating, that ghosting, is not productive. And if you stay in between your reaction response and your thoughtful response too long, then what you're doing is procrastinating on arriving back to the decision or the situation with something to take home. How would your life be better if you could learn to respond thoughtfully? What's the win here? What do I need here? Uh, what happened here? How can I articulate that without it being just flooded with, colored with totally all of my response? It doesn't mean you can't have emotion. I can respond to someone and while I'm responding to them, shed a tear because the emotions are real. I'm a woman, I have a heart, and I don't ever want that to change. I can be excited when I respond, but how I communicate in that excitement may either give clear direction to the people I'm serving or working with, or it could give confusion because I'm spouting out all of my ideas. See, even reaction and response doesn't have to be a function of bad experiences. I am an ideator. I always have ideas coming up in my head, and One of the things that I've been counseled to do is to get an idea notebook and write them down. Every idea that you have, Chrystal Hurst, doesn't have to be shared right now. If you share it right now, that's a reaction out of the overflow of your happy, excited emotion. It's not a bad reaction. It's just a reaction that puts ideas into the atmosphere. And then, is your team, are your volunteers, is your family clear on what you really want to do? Or do you need to thoughtfully respond to the influx of God ideas with order in your communication? So reaction and response isn't simply just about bad things happening. It can be, but it doesn't have to be. Response means I choose my words. Here's some scriptures that might help you. May my words, may my words be pleasing to you, O Lord. Psalm 19:14. Proverbs 17:27. He who has knowledge spares his words, and a man of understanding has a cool spirit. Take the time to cool off. Proverbs 29:20: Do you see a man who's hasty in his words? There is more hope for a self-confident fool than for him. James 1:19-20: Be quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to take offense and to get angry. Half of the stuff you're getting angry about and frustrated about isn't even about you. You're just reacting. A gentle answer, Proverbs 15:1, turns away wrath. A harsh word stirs up anger. Proverbs 18:1, one of my favorites: Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and they who indulge in it will eat the fruit of it. You'll benefit by what you say. Colossians 4:6: Let your speech at all times be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may never be at a loss to know how you should answer someone. When you speak life and not death, the first person who hears your response that is life-giving is you. So I want to challenge you to slow down, to think positively, to set the temperature in the room, to be the person who brings nurture and not just nature, to not just be measured in your response or instantaneous in your response, but to be measured in your response. I don't want you to think short-term. I want you to think long-term. And I want you to think with what I'm about to say with what I'm about to do, with how I'm about to enter the room, with, with my actions and with my nonverbal body language. Am I responding or am I reacting? How do you respond? Well, you're positive as much as you can be. You are the decider of the temperature in the room. You bring nurture, thought, care to your conversations. You take your time in making decisions and thinking things through that you communicate. You are constructive and not destructive. You think with the long term in mind. You take your time. It doesn't mean that you can't react. It just means you need to look at every circumstance in your life that you feel an emotional response to, because that is primarily what emotions do, is they want you to react. Reaction is birthed out of emotion, and your response is going to be born out of clarity of thought. You want to ask yourself in a moment where you just want to Do I need to take a minute? Do I need to take a timeout? Sometimes at the height of a football game— I don't know a whole lot about football, but I sat next to my daddy every Sunday watching it. At the height of a game, when so much is at stake, when there's a tie and they're about to kick the field goal or run for the touchdown and there's only 30 seconds left, a coach will call a timeout. Why? Because he wants them to approach the crucial plays of a game with intention. Don't allow your nerves to get the best of you. Don't allow your anxiety to get in the way of you actually making plays that you've been practicing over time. Come off the field, let's talk it out, let's get re-centered, because this play matters, and it matters that you come to it ready and settled. Moments in your life that require reaction, or that going to tempt you to react, are normally at the height of your game. And if you're not careful to call a timeout, you won't bring your best to that play. I want you to operate with your best. I want you to leave life everywhere you go, not death. I want you to leave encouragement. I want you to speak life, and I want you to know what God has called you to do. I also want you to feel free to cry. I want you to feel free to be angry. I want you to feel free to process, you know, say what you need to say, do what you need to do. God can handle it. But I don't want you to bring that to the spaces and places where your reaction will have a negative domino effect beyond what your eyes can see. Oh, be careful, little eyes, what you see. Oh, be careful, little mouth, what you say.

Why?

Because the Father up above is looking down in love. So be careful of what you do to react and respond in this world. We're not going to be perfect. We're emotional creatures, but we can choose to operate with maturity, even with transparency, with grace, even with truth, with love, even when we have to quote fact, with a smile. You'd be surprised how long just that one thing can go. So here's me telling you, grow up, girl. Respond and not react. It'll save you time, it'll save you headache, it'll save you stress. That cortisol won't run through all your system, and it'll put you in greater control of your life. Now, we're not ever really truly in control, but it certainly will stop the runaway train of the lack of control that comes from you just flying off the handle. Stop flying off the handle, girl. This is me telling you, you can do it. And I hope today's encouragement has been meaningful to you. If it has, don't forget to subscribe to the YouTube channel or like and follow the Facebook page. And then if this video has been helpful to you, comment down below and tell me what is the last time you had a reaction that you regret or response that you were proud of. I'd love to know. And then be sure and share the video. I'll see you next week.