Between Stimulus and Response


I love quotes. They make you pause, make you think. A few words, maybe a few sentences, can sum up so much wisdom. One of great quotes regarding our potential as rational beings to manage our base emotions and gain the freedom that derives from our exerting control over our reactions comes from Viktor Frankl, the concentration camp survivor and author of Man’s Search for Meaning, which, if you have not read, you should walk away and go do so now.

“Between stimulus and response there is space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

It’s a great quote. So great that you can buy the framed print, the coffee mug. But Frankl did not actually say that. There’s no evidence that it should be attributed to him at all. And, so what… It really sounds like something he would have said or written. It’s profound and true and wise people take wisdom from wherever they might find it. The greatest thing about the quote is that it reminds us of the power that we have as human beings. It reminds us that we, who control so very little in the universe, do control ourselves. That we are not merely animals of instinct, but humans of rational thought. All of this with the qualifier: “should we so choose”. Should we choose, in that space between stimulus and our developing response, to recognize that the flood of emotion is us at our lowest form and that we are not bound to what would otherwise follow, we have a chance. We have a chance to learn and grow and begin to gain control of that which is, by all rights, truly our own. Easy? No. Decidedly not. Most of us have never and will never understand the context in which Viktor Frankl developed his insight into man. When we consider the times during which we have relinquished that space in between and displayed our worst, the stakes were likely much lower. So here we insert the actual Viktor Frankl quote…

"When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves."

It’s important to control that space between stimulus and response, because life will always present other opportunities to grow. We control what we can control, we take action and many situations will be made better. But there are times of illness or error or the decisions of others that will present the situation to which Frankl refers. The situation that we are unable to change that leaves us only the option to get up close and personal with ourselves.

How you respond is, always, up to you. It is a choice. Conscious or not.

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