10 Ways to Respond to Any Event

My friend, Cheri Ruskus, just shared these 10 great pointers from Thomas Leonard's book 'The Portable Coach'. I think they are simple, practical and profound techniques for incorporating conscious change and wise choices into even the toughest situations. Enjoy!

1. Every time you're surprised, make a significant personal change. When you are surprised, you usually react. And react some more. Then overreact. Then react to the intensity and consequences of your overreactions. What if every time something surprising happened in your life - whether good or bad - you made a big change of some kind, even bigger than what that surprise event seemed to call for?
2. Look for the five choices you have, in every single circumstance. When faced with a difficult situation, most of us look for two or three options. But there are at least five options in every situation.
3. Never decide, rather, let your body choose for you. There are a lot more cells in your body than in your brain. They know more about you, as a totality, than your brain does. They work in simpler and more direct ways. All you need is enough trust in your feelings, as expressed through your body to let them guide you.
4. Become extremely curious about your reactions. The last time you got frightened or angry did you ask yourself, "Why did I get so scared or ticked off?"
5. Make over responding a personal strategy. If you are alive, creativity interests you. Especially your own creativity. Become creative in how you over respond. In other words make it your personal strategy and, as such, work it.
6. Stop spending time with reactors or nonresponders. Some people are an emotional meltdown waiting to happen. Others are numb and could hardly care less. People who strike you as falling into either of these categories are people who are stuck.
7. Turn every problem into a nonrecurring event. Here's a way to flex your new muscle: One, identify a problem in your life; two take up to ten steps to make sure that it, or anything remotely like it never happens to you again for the rest of your life.
8. Experiment as you over respond. When you are over responding to an event, you'll start by doing the obvious things that comes to mind. But why not over respond in very different ways as well?
9. Evolve, don't just improve. When you improve, you do somthing smarter or better. Not bad! But when you evolve, you fundamentally and permanently change a part of who you are. Improving is good, evolving is better.
10. Over respond immediately, not gradually. This is the trickiest part of this principle - over responding in the moment instead of later.