Our lives are filled with things that
are seemingly urgent. If the phone rang when I was a kid, almost
everyone in the house (including myself) all-but-killed-themselves
trying to answer it as quickly as possible. Imagine heating a tea
kettle on a stove—what do we almost unhesitatingly do when it
begins whistling? Naturally, we try to stop it as quickly as we can. How about when the doorbell rings? What about when an alarm sounds?
Most likely the same answers apply. What's interesting about these
observations is not that we tend to respond to such things, but
rather, that we respond to them so urgently
and without conscious thought.
Now I am not seriously suggesting that
when the phone or doorbell rings, we should not respond appropriately. I am not suggesting that when the timer on the stove
goes off you should consider letting your food burn. Nor do I think
that those of us who seemingly “can't resist” answering a text or
email are suffering from a kind of insanity. What I am suggesting is
that, for many of us, our years of responding to such things in an
urgent and necessary fashion has conditioned us to react to many
things without realizing that we have a choice in the matter.
Regardless of any urgency we may feel,
we can choose not to
answer the phone or doorbell. We can choose not to get the
food out of the oven—and let it burn—just as we can choose to
leave the tea kettle screaming on the stove top. Again, I am
not suggesting to actually do these things. I am simply making the
point that we are not obligated to do them, despite our behavior
often suggesting otherwise.
As an exercise in self-control, try to
overcome the impulse of acting automatically. Try to subdue it and
master it. Things that you may perform automatically, unhesitatingly,
urgently—deny them their urgency and importance. Respond to them
differently. Deliberately heat a tea kettle on the stove, for instance. When it
whistles, take your time getting to it. The sound might drive you
nuts, but let it go for a minute or so and then slowly remove it from
the burner. See? The world didn't end. You're still very much alive
and kicking. You survived the discomfort. No tea kettle? Try the same
exercise with something else. Flex those self-control muscles a bit, you never know when you might need them.
