COLUMNIST: Wit & Wisdom

You’ll agree I’m sure that it is nauseating when someone acts in an offensive way and when challenged the

response is, ‘Well, that’s me,’ the implication being, don’t expect an improvement, writes Adam Harbinson.

Viktor Frankl was an Austrian psychiatrist who survived the holocaust and whose inspirational book; ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’ is positively life changing. He speaks about the space between the stimulus and the reaction. What he means is this; you’re driving along a city street, paying careful attention to your surroundings when someone pulls out in front of you causing you to break hard. Your initial reaction is to blast your horn, maybe scream an expletive or two and fume. Frankl asks the question, why do you do that? There’s no rational explanation, but the suggestion is that you do it because you have always done it. Since you were a child you have been conditioned to respond with violence to a perceived threat. We could go back further and suggest that it’s part of the human condition; fight or flight. A dangerous situation arises and you either fight it or you flee. However, Frankl suggests a different response. The driver who threatened you is the stimulus, you shaking your fist and blasting your horn is the reaction, but Frankl encourages us to create a space, maybe just a second or two, allowing you time to think; ‘I always react like this, but do I want to react thus?’ the key word being ‘want.’ It’s part of taking charge of your life, those who teach or practice Mindfulness call it Autopilot; you do what you do unthinkingly because you have always done it.

One evening, after being introduced to Frankl’s teaching, I returned home to find that someone had parked in my allocated parking space. This had happened a number of times before and I usually reacted by dashing indoors, face red with rage, heart pounding, getting a poster, one I had prepared earlier: what part of ‘NO PARKING’ do you not understand? and plastering it all over the windscreen of the offending vehicle. But, this time I paused, and looked for somewhere else to park my car. And, it dawned on me, this is working. That little space helps us avoid the rush of hormones that raise our blood pressure and do us no favours, and it can lead to a more stress free life – try it.

adamharbinsonbooks.com

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