When I heard this automated response the other day, I smiled. I was thinking, what if during the course of living life, an automated warning played each time one of our buttons had been pushed? The best outcome might be that we would then become more aware of our response and choose differently vs. automatically reacting as we have always done. As in a crosswalk, we might be more vigilant regarding WHAT MIGHT BE THE BEST CHOICE MOVING FORWARD.

So, to lighten my thoughts when this occurred the other day, I remembered the automated recording: “The crosswalk flasher has been activated”. It was still not enjoyable to deal with a button being activated but…. this lightened the experience just a little and I seemed to offer less resistance to what just happened.

The point is, that when our buttons are activated we generally have a reaction that we don’t even think about. It occurs immediately, automatically and repeatedly. It is usually something like anxiety, anger or feeling not good enough. Well, what IF we did not react the way we usually do? There is no better time to become acutely aware of what our next thought, word or action will be then when that specific button gets pushed because….. NOW is the moment you can chose to change your response to something that (finally) feels better.  Every time we do this we gain a little more emotional freedom 🎉 and it lessens the intensity of this button in the future. Who doesn’t want that? 

Instead of trying to control the world around us so that our buttons don’t get pushed which is impossible anyway, what if we became curious as to where our buttons came from? If we can practice observing our buttons, we will start to see that they come with the gift of no longer being controlled by our past.

With love,

Jackie