What do you do when a situation comes up? Do you react or respond to your employees, teams and customers? There is a huge difference between reacting and responding, and it will determine the outcome in the end.

• Key Problems: If you get it wrong by reacting instead of responding, you are going to be in a volatile stage, you become a slave to others and the problem is actually escalated.
• Key Promises: If you get it right, you will find yourself living in a much calmer state, you will have created methodical solutions and the outcomes will definitely be better.

To embrace it, you will need to follow these Key Principles:

1. Stress Inoculation: It is about putting your body emotionally, spiritually and physically into a situation to see your response and process it so you are able to manage it better.
2. Power of Anticipation: If you anticipate potential pitfalls and challenges, you can figure out ways to navigate through those and become better prepared.
3. Establish Options Early: Develop multiple plans and options early on so that you have your alternatives in your arsenal when the real deal comes up.

The Reaction Response Paradigm

This paradigm helps us to understand and compare the different outcomes that reacting vs responding modes produce.

If you just react:

• Your goals will be short-sighted
• There will be passive aggressive behavior
• Responses will be emotional
• There will be no or very poor communication
• There will be overreaction
• A lot of assumptions will be there and people will directly jump into conclusions

On the other hand, if you respond:

• Goals will be visionary
• Values will drive the situation
• The responses will come from a place of knowledge
• Communication will be highly connected
• Instead of overreacting, you will focus on facts
• Your anticipation will help the response to be pre-thought out

So, if you don’t get it right and just react, it will lead to more issues. But if you do get it right by responding, it will lead to solutions.

— Begin Transcript —

Hey there, I’m Mel Abraham, the author of the #1 best-selling book, The Entrepreneur’s Solution and the founder of Thoughtpreneur Academy where we get a chance to teach you how to capture what you know, package it and monetize it so you have more impact, more time and more income.

And welcome to this episode of The Entrepreneur’s Solution show. In this episode, we’re going to touch on something that I see happening out there a lot. It’s a question.

Do you react or do you respond to the people out there?

• To your employees,
• To your team,
• To your customers,
• To the circumstances that surround you,
• To the environment,
• To some interaction.

Because there’s a huge difference between reaction and responding. And so, I want to kind of drill down on that because when we become aware of it, we can find ourselves more effectively communicating and resolving situations that maybe come up, that don’t need to become problematic. And we’re going to talk about what I call The Reaction Response Paradigm.

And if you want to get the downloadable action guide for this, just go to MelAbraham.com/session056 and I’ll send you the download link. And if you happened to be away from your computer or running or working out or driving, I want you to be safe, go ahead and just safely text one word MYLEGACY with no spaces to 38470. I’ll make sure that we get you the download link right away.

So, let’s just get into it. Let’s start to understand the dynamics of what happens when you’re in reaction mode or respond mode. And some of this really kind of comes full circle from my martial arts background. As many of you know that I’ve been in the martial arts for well over almost 4 decades now and I’ve had the opportunity to train with some of the best martial artists in the world.

I lived in Japan and trained but also working with protective details—people that are in the secret service and SWAT and teaching them hand-to-hand combat and defensive tactics, and one of the things that we need to understand when it comes to self-defense and in the martial arts is how we train ourselves to respond rather than react. And I think that,

• That bridges over to our life.
• It bridges over to our business.
• It bridges over to our relationships.

When we are in reaction mode, the question is really, “How are we interacting, reacting, responding or answering back under intense scrutiny or intensity at a high level?”

And so, here’s the challenges that I see with this.

If we get this wrong, if we don’t understand that maybe we’re in reactive mode versus respond mode, what’s going to happen is that we’re going to be in a volatile stage.

We become really volatile with the kinds of things that we do, with the responses we have. We become short in our response.

And I’m going to say that, “I’m guilty of it too. I find myself reacting at times and I need to be aware of it. When I’m aware of it, I start to switch off and understand that.”

But it’s through the years of training and trying to be self-aware of how you can do that. To realize, “Hmm, I’m about to react” and see that trigger and stop the trigger and move down a different path because living a volatile state is challenging. Now, it’s challenging for you but it’s even more challenging for those around you that you’re in a constant volatile kind of state.

The other thing that happens is that

• You become a slave to others.
• You become a slave to their responses.
• You become a slave to what they think, what they say.

And what you’re doing is you’re waiting for them to give you the catalyst, to give you the trigger for you to decide how you’re going to be rather than taking control of your life, coming into it from a place of calmness and deciding how you’re going to respond in a situation.

Now, like I said, this is in all kinds of relationships or even in negotiations. Business relationships where we find that some people might say something, something might happen. In fact, I just literally, just now, got off the phone with a situation where I asked them to do something and they didn’t do it right.

Actually, I asked them to send something out for Saturday delivery and they didn’t do that. Now it’s too late to fix it and I found myself in that moment getting ready to react but I had to pull back and say, “What’s it going to do?” It’s going to destroy a relationship, let’s figure out how we learn from it and move on and figure out how we can navigate around that.

And so, there’s plenty of places in our lives that I think that a trigger gets hit and we start to become enslaved or slaved to what someone else has done to us in order to define how we’re going to show up and I think that that’s a mistake and we all make it.

Like I said, even myself, I do that from time to time myself and the cool thing is that I got a beautiful bride, wonderful lady and she is really good at pointing out when all of a sudden that trigger’s been hit to slow things down.

The other thing is that in the process of reaction you escalate the problem.

And if what we’re trying to do has come to a solution, a resolution or some navigation or mediation of what it is that we’re dealing with in that moment; be it

• A personal relationship,
• A business relationship,
• An interaction,
• A sales relationship.

Well, the last thing we want to do is

• Escalate the problem,
• Escalate the emotions,
• Escalate the things in the negative vein.

In a direction that doesn’t serve us, that doesn’t serve the outcomes that we are looking for. So, here’s the challenges but here’s what happens when we start to manage that. When we realize that we can respond versus react.

And when you respond versus react the first thing that happens is that you find yourself living in a much calmer state.

You’re moving from a place of almost Zen and I hate to use that because it can be cliché but almost a Zen like calmness that just kind of rolls of off you.

• And it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t affect you.
• It doesn’t mean that it doesn’t upset you.
• It doesn’t mean that maybe you’re angry inside

But what it does mean is that you’re not allowing it to drive

• Your decisions,
• Your choices,
• Your interaction from that point forward.

At the same time, it doesn’t mean that you suppress it. You communicate it in a productive way

• To resolve,
• To navigate,
• To negotiate,
• To mediate,
• To solve what you have coming down the pipe at that point.

The other thing that happens when you do it right is that you have created methodical solutions.

You’re going to see that, I’m going to tell you that one of the principles is to make sure that we think about the things that could happen and accomplish solutions in advance.

So, when you reduce the emotional reaction that comes into play, you allow yourself to come from a place of methodical solution, logical thought process:

• That’s based in knowledge
• That’s based in knowing
• That’s based in experience

To come to a conclusion and say, “Alright, this happened. What do we do next? How do we fix it? How do we adjust it? And let’s move on, let’s learn, let’s make sure we don’t duplicate it but rather than reacting in an emotional way, that isn’t going to create a solution, let’s bring methodical solution to bear.”

And the other thing that happens is that we end up with better outcomes.

We truly do. In the process, if all we do is attack and say, “I want to beat someone down because they made a mistake. Or I want to win this and in order to win it, you need to lose” and I don’t buy into this zero sum game of: In order for a business to succeed, another business needs to fail.

I actually think that there’s this co-operative competition where businesses make each other better in the process, through the process of competition. I don’t need to destroy my competition in the process of my own success. I actually am going to lift my competition up

• To show up differently,
• To show up better,
• To show up bigger

In a way, so we all grow in the process. Many of you have heard me say that, “I think Apple is a better company because of Microsoft and vice versa. Microsoft’s a better company because of Apple.”

Now, they both have their issues. They both have their problems. But I think that, if they had been left to their own devices without the competition, they wouldn’t be at the level they’re at and they would have had even more problems and challenges and things going on in their business. And I think that’s the same in our personal relationship and our business relationships. Think about it.

Like I said, I mentioned my wife earlier. Beautiful bride, extremely intelligent. An executive that runs teams, that builds teams. She’s phenomenal at leadership and leading teams and she challenges me to continue to grow and I challenge her to continue to grow.

And we’re constantly in communication and discussion and reflection. And what are you thinking, having a dialogue and that process is it’s like two people sharpening their swords and sharpening their knowledge, their experience by virtue of holding us to a standard and raising the standard.

Holding us to a standard and raising the standards, we end up with better outcomes in that process. So, when we respond versus react; when we allow ourselves to bring methodical solutions to bear, we find that we end up with better outcomes.

So, in order to do that what are the things you need to understand. Well, let me just give you; there’s a couple of principles. There’s more than this but I want to give you what I think are the key principles for you to take away.

Now, when you embrace these, when you integrate these, when you understand these and you move these forward into your life, into your personal relationships, your business relationships, your interactions, you sales relationships; you’re going to see things differently because you’re going to come at them with a greater sense of:

• Appreciation,
• Empathy,
• Understanding,
• Knowledge, and
• Options

> To try and solve whatever issues that might come about from.

So, the first one is what I call Stress Inoculation.

Now, stress inoculation is a term that’s used in military and police, in self-defense, in some martial arts. What happens is that the body has a visceral and physiological response or reaction to a stressor, an outside stressor.

Many times, many people don’t even realize how their body is going to respond until we put them into that situation, and not just intellectually but emotionally, spiritually, physically into a situation to see how their physiological response is going to be and what we do when we’re training police and when I’m training law enforcement and police and secret service and those folks, we put them through what’s called Stress Inoculation Training.

In other words, we wanted to put them under the same kind of environmental stimulus that could happen out in the street. So, (1) we could see what would happen to them physiologically, (2) they had a chance to process it and understand it, and through that process we inoculate them, we in a sense, inform them so, they can now manage the process and I’ll give you a for instance.

So, I teach defense of tactics. I have one organization that I’ve taught defense of tactics for their whole protective detail group and they do protection for a lot of politicians and stars and executives. And I teach them that, I’ve taught them hand to hand.

Well, they go through some other types of training themselves. Threat assessment training and all of those types of things and they said, “Well, since you are training us, how would you come through our training” and the interesting thing is that so we went through, I went through their part of the training which included things like tear gas in the eyes which is a wonderful experience that I hope none of you ever experience and something called Simmunition Training.

So, interestingly enough simmunition training is under live gunfire but the gun, the shells are being shot at you are not bullet rounds but they’re a round that when it hits you, leaves a mark, can leave it well, hurts like heck but it typically won’t kill you unless it hits you in a vulnerable spot and we wear some protective gear.

So, what they did with me is they took me to a building and I was supposed to go into this building, find the person that I’m supposed to save and get them out of the building. And at some point, I’m going to get attacked by gunfire. And for the fun of it, I think they thought it would be cool to just see what would happen, they put a heart monitor on me to see what would happen physiologically, my response to that process.

And so, before I went into the building, I was dressed. I had a helmet on to protect my head and before I went into the building, my heart rate was about 60 beats a minute and as I went in, the heart rate was increasing 80 – 90 beats a minute, they tracked it. But when the gunfire hit, and I started to get hit with gunfire, my heart rate jacked up in an instant to 160 beats a minute.

Now, what happens with the body, if you understand it is that there’s a set, a patterned set of catastrophic effects physiologically on the body as your heart rate starts to rise above 175 and 180, and things start to shut down in protective mode.

And so, what happened to me is that it hit about 160 – 165 and never passed that threshold but it’s good to know and to understand what the impacts are.

Now, I’m not saying you go in and go get shot at. What I am saying is this: If you’re going to have a discussion, if you’re going to have a conversation, if you’re going to have a sales interaction. My wife does this with her sales team all the time.

Do the roleplaying. Go through the process. Put yourself in the zone so you understand the physiological feelings that are going to go through you during that moment that potentially can go through you during the month.

If you’re going out, in fact I was just a, one of my people that I mentor just posted something about his fear of trying to get out there and speak but he really, really wants it. And the reality is that the only way we’re going to surpass that is go through this stress inoculation process.

By putting yourself into the process and so, I told him to schedule a speaking engagement. Let’s schedule, let’s get you out there, let’s move through the process and then let’s evaluate, let debrief it and let’s learn from what your responses are to do that.

And something like speaking is stressful for a lot of people and they say it’s the biggest fear even before dying and I told them. I said, “Every time I go out to speak, it’s stressful, I’m nervous, I’ve got some anxiety but it’s coming from a place of service. I want to serve.”

Every time I’m ready to turn the camera on, I have to think about it and because I want to come from a place of service, I want to make it valuable for you and for my listeners and for my audience and the community that has been so gracious to me over the years.

And so, what I think we need to do in this process is put ourselves in those moments that we might find ourselves in,

• Whether it’s a sales meeting or a sales discussion.
• Whether it’s a mediation.
• Whether it’s a negotiation.
• Whether it’s in an interaction from a relationship standpoint.

So, we start to understand what our mental and physiological responses will be so we can manage them better because we’re better informed.

The second principle is the Power of Mind Anticipation.

I’ve a good friend of mine, Steve Linder. He says that, “You want to look for people that anticipate problems and solve them before they become real.” And I think that this is truly an important aspect especially for entrepreneurs.

And it’s an interesting thing how I saw this develop in me. The power of anticipation developed in me through the martial arts again because I had to look for areas that I thought were unsafe and anticipate what would happen, what could happen, what were the possibilities. Get the solutions in place before it ever happened.

Think about it, if you anticipate the potential problems, the pitfalls and the challenges that might come about in your business or in a trip, in an interaction and you figure out other ways to navigate through those, you’re better prepared—you’ve got more tools in your tool belt to work through that. So,

• Anticipate what possibly could happen.
• Don’t fluff it away, don’t sit back and fluff it away.
• Don’t sit back and push it aside and say, “Ah it will never happen.”

If it is a possibility, then it could possibly happen. Think about it and say, “How would I respond?” Not, “How I would react. How would I respond?”

And then, the third principle that I would love for you to start to implement it and integrate into you is, Establish Your Options Earlier.

The time to look for options is not when you’re in the heat of battle, it’s not when you’re in the heat of the moment. When you look at something, when I’m looking at business, I’m going to look at, “How do I create success in that business?”

Not just one way but multiple ways. How do I find multiple avenues to get the outcome that we’re looking for?

So, I have options early. Lot of people have heard me say that, “I think your business model is more important than your business plan” and I truly believe that but there is a business, there’s a planning part to business and when you are planning the business plan and when I work with some of my clients, we create a plan and I say, “That’s great.”

So, here’s your plan. Let’s put it aside and now let’s do another plan without using the previous plans. Let’s come up with a whole another way, to be successful in the marketplace. Let’s come up with alternatives early because think about what’s going to happen.

As it has been said, once a plan is in place the one thing’s for certain—it won’t go as planned. And so, if it’s not going to go as planned then let’s have some options on the table before we start on the journey.

Let’s figure out what other offerings we have, what other detours we have, what other possibilities we have so when we hit an obstacle, when we hit a challenge, we just go, “Huh! Already thought about it. Here’s the option. Let’s move forward.”

So, those are the three principles that if you just capture those in your life, in your business, in your interactions it’ll serve you greatly. So,

• Stress inoculation,
• The power of anticipation,
• Establish your options early.

So, with that let’s just talk a little bit about what I call The Reaction Response Paradigm. Understanding when you might be in reactive mode and when you might be in response mode. Being able to score yourself and understand what is a high or low

• In your life,
• In your business,
• In your relationships, and
• In your interactions.

So, when we look at this, when you see someone that is reacting. Typically, what they’re doing is they’re very short-sighted. They’re very much in the moment emotionally entrenched in the outcome of that moment and they’ve lost sight of the vision, the goals and the bigger picture.

If you’re responding, the choices that you’re making are coming from a place of the vision you have and the greater goals that are driving you. One of the other things that I think indicates that someone is reacting and how this may serve you is, it may identify the person that you’re interacting with is coming from a reactive place and not a responsive place, and in that situation it’s very difficult to get the outcome that you’re looking for until you move them away from that reaction and move them to responding.

So, you can then start with them understanding. You can then start to influence them and help them shift and allay those emotional aspects that can cause them to make choices that are less than productive, let’s just say, okay?

So, another thing that I think you’ll see is you’ll see passive aggressive behavior when you’re in reactive mode versus behavior that is driven by values. Remember, one of the most important decision we can make as a person and as a business is what are we going to stand for?

And every decision we make is built on that pillar of what are we going to stand for? Get that defined. Get that ingrained. Have that standard and know that. And when you talk to people around you and they say, “Hey what does Mel stand for?” You should see a pattern of response that comes into play. Otherwise, you’re not living through those values.

Values are so, so important and so, sometimes when people are reacting, in reactive mode, they’ve left the values, so they haven’t even defined them and many of you have been through my Business Breakthrough Academy and we spent a lot of time defining the identity of your business, the identity of who you are.

And even in Thoughtpreneur Academy, we spend a lot of time around the “You” piece of it because that’s what’s driving the business and we don’t come at it with a passive-aggressive nature so or even an aggressive nature. We come at it from a values perspective and start to respond differently in the process.

Another thing that I think you’ll see is that they’re very emotional. When you’re hot, when your emotions start to go up, your intellect starts to go down. So, one of the things that we need to watch out for is that when they become highly emotional in their responses, in that and you can see it in their face and you can see the redness and you can see the tightness and all that, and at times you just need to step away and say, “Listen it doesn’t need to be this emotional. Let’s figure this thing out. Let’s bring it back down.”

And I’m not saying to discount their feelings at all, not in the least. I’m just saying, let’s use them in a productive way and so, when you’re responding, you’re coming from

• A place of knowledge,
• A place of understanding,
• A place of empathy.

Where you’re seeking to understand first and move forward from there in that process.

The other thing that I think you see is that when you are reactive and those emotions go up, there’s no communication. It is very poor communication. It’s defensive, it’s heels dug in, it’s blame, it’s accusatory and there’s nothing good that’s going to come of that versus when you’re responding you got connected communication.

You’re trying to see other perspectives, other sides. You’re trying to understand. You’re trying to use language that will start to dissipate the emotions and move you towards some sort of resolutions and solution to whatever situation you’re dealing with is.

Then you have what I think is what appears to be to an outsider is overreacting. Now, I’m going to warn you. The last thing you want to do to try and deal with this, is to say, “You know I think you’re overreacting.” Because they’re just going to jack up even more. They’re going to go crazy on you at that point in time.

Just understand to take it in and then,

• Focus on the facts.
• Focus on your responsibility.
• Focus on how you can communicate differently.
• Focus how you can connect with them.
• Focus on the values and try to dissipate it.

But saying, “Hey, I think you’re overreacting” certainly is going to just pour gasoline on the fire in the process.

And then, I think that you’ll see that they jump to conclusions. There’s a lot of assumptions in there and maybe what they do is that they’ve been thinking through the process and they skipped a few steps and they assumed something that really isn’t true but if you respond you’ve really pre-thought it out.

And this goes back to the power of anticipation. Goes back to having options upfront that you’ve thought it out so, the response doesn’t need to be created on the spot. You’ve already created it previously.

And when you get these things right, like I said, when you get these things right because if you don’t get it right on the react side, you end up in a situation that leads to more issues and less solutions. But when we’re focused on the respond side, you’re going to find yourself that it leads to more solutions.

So, this whole episode came about because of an interaction that I was watching amongst other people and I said, “God, they could’ve completely avoided it if they both came from a response standpoint and not a reactive standpoint.”

But because not only did one come up from a reactive standpoint, both came from a reactive standpoint. It was like two rams butting heads and they were never going to solve it and the issue wasn’t that big and the issue grew to be huge:

• In their minds,
• In their hearts,
• In their spirit,
• In their emotions.

And it did a lot of destructive work and had they come at it with a bit of a response, it would have been different.

So, I hope that this serves you. I hope that you start to think about things and understand the triggers within you that might move you towards the react side and how you can pull yourself back towards the respond side.

It’s going to serve you greatly as you move forward. It’s going to serve you in your relationships, your personal relationships, your parenting relationships, your intimate relationships, your business relationships. It’s going to serve you because let’s face it, no matter whether you’re in business or not in business, people are a way of life; people are in your life and we can’t get around it. I guess, we can go live on an island somewhere but that certainly doesn’t sound fun.

So,

• Figure out how you can connect better.
• Figure out how you can serve better.
• Figure out how you can be more responsive than reactive in what you do.

So, I hope you found this of value to you and if you did, do me a favor, share this with a friend. Everyone can use some additional tools especially in these types of aspects of life and business and wealth is to understand.

Share this with a friend and make sure that you’ve subscribed. Click the subscribe button and make sure that you’re subscribed, that you stay with me because I’ve got a lot more of these types of episodes and tools and tactics and strategies for you to serve you in your life, in your business and building a life that you deserve.

And if you want to get The Reaction Response Paradigm, just go to MelAbraham.com/session056 or text me. Text MYLEGACY one-word no-spaces to 38470. I’ll make sure that I send it your way. And if you have a question for me or a challenge that you’re dealing with or something that you’re unsure about, whether it comes to business, success, wealth or even something in life just go to AskMelNow.com, leave me your question, leave me your comment. I want to hear from you. I want to serve you and support you as we go and we’ll make sure that we get it on one of the upcoming episodes.

Again, thank you for taking the time. Thank you for being here and I look forward to seeing you in the next episode. Until then,

May your vision be grand, your journey epic and your legacy significant!

See you soon. Cheers. Bye!!

— End Transcript —

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Like this? Please share it and help a few more people bring their dreams out of the darkness and give life to them again. Cheers, Mel

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