Knee-jerk reactions

What is resilience?

Resilience is how you react, respond and recover from different situations and events, usually those you didn’t want to happen. Another way of putting it is that it’s the holding on, bouncing back and fighting on even after a debilitating defeat.

Olympic champions have resilience. Successful business people have resilience. Persistent people have resilience. Leaders should have resilience.

Resilience starts with your own strength of attitude. It’s an act of the will. It’s a decisive action, a determination saying, “I may have been knocked down today, but I will never be knocked out.” The resilient person picks himself up when knocked down and continues the fight.

There’s a big difference between a response triggered by careful thinking and a response that happens without thinking. We call the latter “knee-jerk response” – a dumb response, an action that sprang out of an intense emotional moment and without careful thinking. We said something or acted a certain way that we regretted later.

But here’s a thought: if you refer to that response as a knee-jerk response, then it’s your admission that you used your knees to think! The mind should do the thinking, not the knees.

An angry outburst, or an email, text or Facebook message sent out of spite… Vicious talk against someone which reached that someone’s ears. Then maybe we’ve defended ourselves by saying, “I just did what I was told…” But these aren’t reasons, these are excuses. And Peter Drucker, the dean of modern day management, says, that there are two kinds of people: those who are into results and those who are into reasons; reasons why they cannot produce results.

When people use reasons, it simply means they haven’t taken responsibility for their actions. They’ll never learn from the experience. Anyone can make an excuse, but it takes a person of character to figure out what they can do to respond, be in control of their emotions, and think quickly on their feet and not with their knees.

Think first before you act. Know what your weaknesses are, and work hard on fixing those. If you’re temperamental, learn to cultivate patience. Hold back the temptation to act without thinking. If you know you’re weak in certain areas, determine in advance ways and methods on how to avoid those. If you’ve been hooked on drugs, alcohol or women before, that means you need to be strong and wise, and to stay away from compromising places and situations this time around. This is thinking with the mind, so when an unexpected situation comes up, your mind will dictate your action, not your knees.

As a country, our people have been branded as “the most emotional people in the world.” We need to master our moods and emotions, and engage in critical thinking. Seek God’s help in this area, and ask Him to mold our character so we become wiser. Let knee-jerk reactions be a thing of the past, and let mindful and wise thinking be the norm from this day on. Remember, leaders think with their minds, not with their knees.

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