Stop the fear now: no one can make you feel angry or scared – it’s your own programming in action!
“How you respond to any event is entirely up to you.”
The sooner you can understand and believe the above statement, the sooner you will be in control of your own life. Any event that may happen to you is neither positive nor negative, neither happy nor sad. All events are Neutral. The response that you have in experiencing this neutral event is what creates how it affects you.
“All events are neutral.”
More than 90% of all the decisions we make are determined by our subconscious processing them according to past experiences. Once an association is made to have a point of reference for understanding the event, then a decision is made. Unfortunately, most of the shocking events in your past are also associated with emotion. Emotion is a very strong bridge that helps determine your current decision making.
So the way it works is like this: Stimulus – Pause – Response. Every time you are faced with some kind of stimulus, you pause for a moment while your on-board computer (subconscious mind) tries to make sense of the stimuli and, as a result of the processed information, you make your decision.
An example would be receiving a letter from the IRS which is itself a neutral event. It’s just something you received. However, as you pause to reflect on it, you may associate this card with the fear of having an audit or possibly having miscalculated your taxes and owing them more money than you expected. As a result of these thoughts, your response would be anxious to open the letter as quickly as possible associated with fear and worry.
Another example would be receiving a phone call in the middle of the night from one of your parents. Their initial response may be concern that something is wrong or that one of them has been injured or possibly some other type of emergency. What started as a neutral event (the phone call) once processed created a fear response.
In both examples, the fear response was probably unfounded. The IRS letter may have simply been a balance sheet of how much you’ve paid in taxes over the past few years. The phone call from your parents may have just been your mom calling because of insomnia and she wanted to talk to someone.
Although this is a process that occurs naturally with humans, the amount of stress in a given situation can be greatly reduced through awareness. Realizing that each event is neutral when it occurs gives you an opportunity to reflect more on your response and think of other possible responses that may be more positive. This can be the difference between experiencing fear and anger or simply realizing “it is the way it is.” What a way to eliminate fear!
The reason I mentioned that this is a process that occurs naturally with humans is that animals don’t process things the same way. Instead of experiencing an event with the Stimulus – Pause – Response method, they simply process events with the Stimulus – Response method.
Upon receiving a stimulus, they respond immediately. It is more instinctive than processing the thought as a response with emotion. An example of this would be if you accidentally step on your cat’s tail and, in response, she turns around and scratches your arm to the point of bleeding. The scratching was an immediate response. It was not done out of malice, revenge, or any other form of calculated emotion. In fact, after 5 minutes, he may have returned to showing you affection, wanting you to pet him again. He held no grudge or anger as a result of the event.
We are 100% in control of our actions and reactions. Due to the victim mentality that most people experience too often, we tend to blame others for our fortune or misfortune. It is my hope that from now on we learn that everything is neutral so that we can create happier situations for ourselves and those around us.
Those are the facts, take a moment to pause and reflect on them and see how you respond. The choice is yours.