Stimulus and Response

Stephen Covey in his ‘7 habits of highly effective people’ and the ‘eighth habit’ stresses on the time gap between the stimulus and response. Between the stimulus and response there is a fraction of a second lag, which helps us to choose our actions which are value based and principle centered. Sri Sri Ravishankar goes one more step ahead and asks ‘Do you have any choices, when you are totally surrendered to the almighty?’ – he states that in the state of complete surrender to almighty lord, we have only one option – to follow him.

Yesterday I wanted to watch the 20-20 cricket match, and suddenly someone else wanted to see some other program on the TV. The options I had was;

1) Use my authority and overrule other’s choices

2) Get angry and do whatever I wanted to do

3) Get out of that room

4) Have the realization that this is one out of 45 matches to be played and is not that important. Have that child like curiosity to see that program which others are preferring over the 20-20 match. There should be something unique there.

I went by the 4th option and did not regret. It was a fantastic dance competition which I enjoyed to the core

Now I am even more motivated to leverage the time lag between stimulus and response:-)