18. Reactor or Responder? How I Stopped Making These 3 Mistakes

One thing I didn't do is immediately respond to him. I took 10 to 15 minutes and I reflected. And this is the lesson I learned from this story. This is the reason I shared this story. My wife says this intro sounds like a conspiracy mystery. So I'll stop that voice and tell you, this show is for you to get you on the track you want for your life. I'm going to share encouraging educational content, hopefully entertaining, that will help you direct All right, welcome to another episode of the Direct Your Life podcast. I'm Tony Suriano, your coach today, and I have a question straight out for you. Are you a reactor or a responder? Do you react immediately to negative news, negative people, negative comments, negative texts, or do you take it in, take some time? Have some intent on how you want to respond. That's the question for today. I'm also going to share 3 lessons that I've learned that really helps me streamline the good stuff in my life, and I hope you can check it out, adjust it, learn it for yourselves, and see if it works for you. And then I'm gonna have 3 things I ask of you at the end of this episode, so stick around. Let's get into it. The first question again, are you a reactor? Are you a responder? Think about the first responders when there's an incident, a dangerous incident in society. They are responders because they have good intent to try to help. They're not just getting the call, reacting, flipping out. That would not work. That wouldn't help. You want to be the responder in life, in relationships, and it takes Practice. It takes conditioning. Before I really start about the lessons, let me share a quick little story that just happened. Let's call this gentleman Skinny Bob. I contacted Skinny Bob to ask something about his business because I was curious if they offered a certain thing I was interested in. He got back to me, he was really nice, and then I didn't respond to him for For a week because I had a lot of things I was doing. It wasn't pressing. Then I finally got back to him today and I thought, you know what, while I'm thanking him, I'm a video producer, director-producer. Let me check out his site one more time, see if he has a video. Maybe he needs a video. Maybe I could help him. Maybe not. But it's my duty as a film producer to ask businesses if I can provide film services. So I emailed him. I took my time and shared a little bit about me, didn't make a long email, and I said, hey, you want to meet up or talk about this? It would be great. I'd make some time for you. Let me know. Send. Guess what happened? Within minutes, Skinny Bob reacted, and it was one of those reactions like, oh, this guy's trying to sell me something. No, thanks for the bait and switch. Don't ever contact me again. I admit I was a little bit reactive first, just emotionally. I said, whoa, why does this guy think I'm attacking him or something? It's not like it was a hard sales thing. And then I started to see how he could, he could perceive it. And I thought, hmm, all right, what can I learn here? One thing I didn't do is immediately respond to him. I took 10 to 15 minutes and I reflected. And this is the lesson I learned from this story. This is the reason I shared this story because one, I didn't want the emotional reaction I had to go into my day. That doesn't serve me. Two, I didn't want to respond to him and have like some silly waste of time war back and forth. So I thought, okay, wow, he misinterpreted what I said and how I was offering my service because I actually wanted to help his Site looked really fun and, and interesting. There was little cartoon characters everywhere, and I was like, oh, I would want— I would want to work with this guy, help with this guy. He has no video. Maybe he wants a video. I don't know. Let me ask. So I was genuinely interested. Now, maybe my email wasn't perfect, and I can't expect it to be perfect. I can't expect his reaction to be perfect. I could expect he's going to react. People just most of the time They don't take a few moments. They don't take a few beats before they respond. They just react. And that doesn't serve us. So that first lesson is you get what you focus on and what you label things as, and those 2 things dictate what you do. Tony Robbins, the practical psychologist, he always taught me You have the choice to focus on the good or the bad. You have the choice to decide what this is meaning to you, and then you have the choice to do what you should or should not do, right? So Skinny Bob focused on, this guy's emailing me trying to sell me something, what's his deal? Instead of maybe Hmm, let me change the meaning. Maybe this guy wants to help genuinely. Let me check out his site. And if he did, he probably would have seen all these cool commercials I've produced and seen all the things and people and products that I've helped flourish. But he probably didn't. So that was his meaning he put. He focused on what I was doing to him. He put the negative meaning on it, and then he took that reaction response I don't know about you, have you ever got a negative text or something and then you auto-responded? You're like, there, and then you regretted it. I'm sure we all have done that. Does not serve us. It's a battle you do not want to engage in. So that's the first lesson. What do you focus on in life, in communication? What meaning are you going to give it, and what are you going to do? And to inject one last thing in that lesson is, why not give people the benefit of the doubt first and then ask and clarify? What a concept, right? Geez, it took me a while in my life to condition the way I respond, where I take beats, I pause. I mean, I have a mouth on me, people know that, and Often I'll say silly, hopefully comedic remarks when I'm out and about, and that's a little bit reactionary. But I say, hey, if I'm doing it in good humor, I'm okay. But if it's something real, something negative, or it's a relationship, I don't want to damage it. I want to build it up. I want to make it better. I want to learn. I want to make sure that I'm using this situation as a way to communicate better, because communication to me To pretty much everyone in the world, if you just stop and think about it, is one of the number one things you need to work on for the rest of your life. That's lesson 1. Grab a pen. Lesson 2, this one can change everything in your life. I learned this from many arguments. Many people that love me have told me this. Tony, give a disclaimer before you X, Y, and Z, because sometimes you come at me with all this energy and I'm like, wait, what's he doing? Is he trying to change me who I am? I don't know. So I could have given a disclaimer, said, hey, I don't wanna sound like a marketing guy or anything, and I might not even be able to help you. I'm not sure what your goals are for your company, but I just thought I'd throw it out there. I'm a video producer and your company seems really cool. Would love to work with you. Let me know. If you're interested. I could have said it more on that line with the disclaimer. That's lesson number 2, just set a disclaimer. And when you're talking to people in real time, this changes the game because you can say, hey, um, I don't want to make you feel bad or anything, and I just— my intention here is to actually see if we can work together better. Can I share something with you? Guess what? They're going to say, oh, oh, okay, yeah. And they already are on your side. Take it one step forward. If you're talking to them in person, walk on the other side of that table and sit with them, not across from them, because you don't want a barrier between yourselves. Lesson number 2. Lesson number 3. So I stay on track here. Not everyone has to love you or like you. Or even engage with you. You don't have to have that client. You don't have to have that friend like you. It doesn't matter. Because guess what? If you're just open to the ones that do like you and see the value, just connect and focus more on that. Don't get bent out of shape. Don't get bent out of shape. I just thought— saw that in my head. I don't know why, but don't get bent out of shape when someone doesn't like your email. Because I could have let this fester. Maybe by expressing it to you, I'm releasing the energy as well. But I could have let this fester and maybe I wouldn't reach out to the next contact I happened to make because I thought, well, I don't want to come off like I'm marketing all the time. But hey, I run a business. I got to market. People have to know what I do and how I can help them, right? If you have your own business or you work for one, what's the number one thing that helps a business succeed? Marketing, right? You have to be telling people what you do and what you offer and your value. And you have value. I have value. People need to know. And the right ones that seek your value, you're going to connect with. And it's a beautiful thing. So that's lesson number 3. To recap, be a responder. Make sure you have a disclaimer. Decide what to focus on. Decide the meaning you want to give it. Give people the benefit of the doubt. And remember, not everyone has to connect with you. You are special for those people. And for those people, they just don't want to have anything to do with you or me. Okay? That's it. It's not a big deal. There's so many people in the world to connect with. I can email infinity people until I pass, and I will not have emailed everyone in the world. It's pretty amazing how many people there are. Imagine how many emails there are. I have like 7 or 8 different emails myself. Imagine if they did a collective research on how many people have how many emails. That would be crazy. Okay, I digress. There's statistics out there, I'm sure, with that. But that's the recap. Okay? I hope those lessons helped you. I hope that this actually resonated with you. If it did, please let me know in the comments. If you're on Spotify, there's a section you can comment. And if you can, please rate and share the show. This is something that's gonna really help me grow this channel, grow this podcast, grow the show. I appreciate it so much, more than you know. I'm Tony Suriano again, and I thank you for being here. But before I go, I wanted to give you 3 things to do. Wrote this down for you. First, honest feedback to yourself. Are you a reactor most of the time, or are you responder most of the time? You know what you want to be. You want to be a responder. And the tool when you become a responder is to count to 5 before you speak. When you're in real-time situations that could be sketchy, quote sketchy, or negative, okay, take a beat. And if it's in text or an email, take 10 minutes minimum. Now, that's the first question. Answer that brutally. Are you a reactor or are you a responder? Number 2, how much smoother would life be if you were a responder? Imagine every relationship discussion, every debacle, every kerfuffle. You just coolly sit back and You really listened to them. You gave them the benefit of the doubt. You counted to 5 in your head. You set good intention, and then you went in and spoke. How amazing would your life be? Your relationships, everything, your business, your emails. I know it's going to help me just by saying this to you because it's going to condition it even more for my next interaction. That's number 2. Number 3. Ask someone to hold you accountable because it's hard to do everything by yourself. I should know. I used to be that guy that tried to do everything by himself. My ego was inflating and I didn't get that far because you can kind of get far by yourself. But man, when you work together with people in a community that holds you accountable, or your friend, you get far and you actually will develop the habits you want. So find that friend you trust and say, hey, Listen, I want to be a responder. So whenever we're chatting, if there's something I react to, just remind me. Say, hey, I thought you were going to respond and take like 5 seconds, 6 seconds before you respond. Think about that. If you asked a friend right now, could you hold me accountable? When I get crazy emails or texts, can you make sure I do not do this? Gotcha. Because you do not want to be that person. I know too many people that they email and text me so quickly. When there's any little problem, and I'm just, whoa, I feel sorry for them because they're probably not going to grow. Their biggest problem is this little thing when there's so many other awesome problems to solve, which I would call puzzles that are fulfilling out there. If you are really interested in having someone hold you accountable, check out creativesunleashed.com/mastermind. This is a monthly live and a private community that I put together, and it's really exciting. This is brand new. I'm truly proud of putting this together. The people there are really great. It's growing. I want you to be a part of it if this is something that maybe could help you. Disclaimer, this is something I care about and I believe will really help you, and I'm not trying to just push you in just to push you in. I wanna make sure it actually could help you. So check it out, creativesunleashed.com/academy. Awesome. Mastermind. You can see all the information there and see how it is. This is the group to be in if you want to be held accountable and get to your next level. That's it for today. Thank you so much. I'm excited that you stayed this far and you're still listening. If you are, please share this to someone that needs it, and I'll see you in the next episode.