0:00 when you're easily offended you're easily manipulated and why is that so true well i've got to tell you it has a lot to do with how we react when we're offended or triggered and before you encounter anyone who's going to trigger you again i want to arm you with the knowledge of what happens what truly happens when you react and what happens when you don't react and why that is so powerful and at the end i want to share some tips for holding that reaction back because it's a lot easier said than done let's get to it welcome to the common ego community my name is christina and today we're talking about the power of not reacting on this channel a lot of times you'll
0:45 hear me talk about responding versus reacting right so that is calculating your response instead of just letting it flow out your mouth because when you let that response flow what you're doing really is you're letting your ego take center stage and i want to share with you three reasons why not reacting is the more powerful way to go so the first reason why not reacting is so incredibly powerful is because it gives you the power to write your own story so when you react it's what's happening behind the scenes is your ego is taking center stage you're saying okay ego here you go you drive and what the ego does is it attempts to keep us safe good intentions right but
1:32 it can only operate based on past experience anytime anything happens to us our mind and body they keep score and that's what jumps up and jumps in to protect us in the form of anger or defensiveness those defense mechanisms that kind of come out almost like before we can control them and these reactions are based purely in past pain maybe past traumatic events and so if you feel like you're stuck in a cycle like your life is on replay you're repeating the same events and you keep getting hurt in the same ways over and over again take a look at your reactions are you reacting or are you pausing to think and be present and to make
2:19 conscious choices so the second reason that it's so powerful to not react is that you are going to show up as your authentic self and so avoid the rumination spiral that comes after we let our ego take the wheel so what i'm talking about here is when somebody triggers you right and you just you just react like that you just you feel angry you feel attacked and you just first thing that comes to mind comes out now that is not always in character for you is it so a lot of us end up afterwards doing kind of a play-by-play replaying the events that happened and kind of re-damaging ourselves in the process so not only
3:06 were we triggered or offended by what this person said but then on top of that we're feeling bad we're feeling guilty maybe even some shame for the way we responded after you react you are acutely aware that you are not fully in control you let your emotions get the better of you and that's not really your best self right that's never our best foot forward and so after the fact even though the reaction you've reacting to something that somebody said to trigger you especially if you know that they're doing it on purpose it might feel good in the moment because you might feel like i've hurt this person or i've defended myself so there's a fleeting positive feeling that can come after reacting
3:52 but more often than not i found that when you start really thinking about what happened and reflecting on how you behaved the positive feeling goes away and it's replaced with bad feelings so you allowed this person to hurt you in two ways really they hurt you with the offensive thing that they said or the triggering thing that they said and then you're hurt again because you reacted they were able to get a reaction out of you and that just adds to all the negativity and the bad feelings of this encounter so when you don't react you are not acting out of fear or anger you are acting consciously and you're acting with a clear mind and from there you're really not likely to regret
4:38 things that you've said or done so you can walk away from this encounter feeling good about yourself the third reason why it's so powerful to avoid reacting is that you aren't contributing to negativity now think about it this way when you go out into the world and you're feeling good and you're interacting with other people what do you expect of them you hope for more positivity you hope for them to reflect back to you what you are feeling inside and often they do right not always but often often you will find that if you go out with a smile on your face other people may smile back at you so let's flip this around when you go out and you're in a terrible mood what do you expect from other people you're probably not looking for positivity
5:25 right positivity might annoy you in that moment when you're really in that grumpy place that that angry place you're more likely looking for a fight and maybe you don't go out actively looking for fights but when somebody engages with you in that way it might feel good it might feel like a release to get that anger out so when someone else is triggering you and they're doing it on purpose what they're doing is essentially that they're going out into the world with their negativity and they're not looking for your positivity they're looking for your fight but think about it like a black cloud there's the person who's triggering you they're coming to you and even if they have a smile on their face if they're trying to trigger you they've got a black cloud over their
6:11 head their energy is negative and if you react instead of taking a beat and responding what you're doing is you are contributing to their black cloud you are giving them exactly what they want exactly what they're after and not only are you engaging but you are making it stronger you're making that negative energy more powerful this is what they want and so you contributing to what they want is making them more powerful but not only that when you do contribute to their black cloud you walk away with some of it yourself you don't get away scot-free because you're you're feeling that negative energy too and you contributed to it so
6:57 it's on you and when you walk away you might spread it to someone else too the power in not reacting goes far beyond the encounter that you have with one person there's often a domino effect and even if you think that you don't carry forward bad feelings into other encounters it's going to affect your energy in everything you do so it's always best to leave it where it is do not participate in it do not accept it for your own and that energy remains that person's problem it's not yours okay so what do you do when someone is triggering you let's say you are dealing with a total raging narcissist and every single time you
7:43 encounter this person they're coming at you and they're triggering you because they know how and they get pleasure out of it the first and most important thing to do is to acknowledge and be able to identify when you are on the verge of reacting so that just that moment and it's milliseconds right but that moment right before you're about to let loose and just unleash on this person take a deep breath breathe in slowly because that will help calm your mind and count your breaths breathe in for three breathe out for three this will help shift your awareness to yourself and it will help you from getting caught up in the other person's energy remember
8:29 this is theirs this is what they are bringing to the table it is not yours and you don't have to take it so with that i think it would be really helpful if we can set some new ground rules for these encounters number one do not under any circumstances accept anyone else's opinion or criticism of you unless it can help you level up in some way so listen none of us are perfect and we can all benefit from some self reflection in fact it's healthy and our interactions with other people can tell us a lot about what we might need to self-reflect on now any of that stuff could be categorized as stuff that can help you level up because if you just keep doing
9:16 the same old things if you keep repeating the same old patterns you're going to also see the same mistakes reflected at you sometimes information even if it doesn't feel good in the moment can help us level up the stuff i'm talking about rejecting are things that are either not true about you at all or they're just pure criticisms that you can't do anything about like you know you have terrible hair and whether you believe that to be true or not it doesn't matter because what's happening in that moment is if that person feels the need to say something just purely hurtful like that what they're doing is they're projecting they have pain inside of them and they want you to take it on they want you to hurt too and the only appropriate response in that situation
10:01 is to say no thank you you can keep your pain i don't want it the second ground rule for not reacting is to commit to changing your story the ego is only going to drive you where you've been before so if you want to change that story if you want to access new roads and new paths you have to take control and make more conscious choices and the third ground rule i have for you is to look at every trigger every time someone's triggering you or offending you or making you feel bad and want to react look at that as an opportunity for you to level up because when you're not accepting their negative energy that is an opportunity for you to practice that muscle of being
10:46 conscious being in the present moment and not getting carried away in ego in this way you can start living a more conscious and deliberate life and that is incredibly powerful that right there is the power of not reacting it's that you get to take control so i hope you found this video helpful if you are dealing with somebody who is triggering you you may find this video that i did a while back on outsmarting the narcissist in conversation helpful so i will link to it right over here and if you did find this video helpful please like share comment subscribe do all the things to help the channel and this video reach more people and i will see you next time
