Between Stimulus and Response

In answer to those questions, let me share with you the catalytic story of Viktor Frankl.

Frankl was a determinist raised in the tradition of Freudian psychology, which postulates that

whatever happens to you as a child shapes your character and personality and basically governs your

whole life. The limits and parameters of your life are set, and, basically, you can't do much about it.

Frankl was also a psychiatrist and a Jew. He was imprisoned in the death camps of Nazi Germany,

where he experienced things that were so repugnant to our sense of decency that we shudder to even

repeat them.

His parents, his brother, and his wife died in the camps or were sent to the gas ovens. Except for

his sister, his entire family perished. Frankl himself suffered torture and innumerable indignities,

never knowing from one moment to the next if his path would lead to the ovens or if he would be

among the "saved" who would remove the bodies or shovel out the ashes of those so fated.

One day, naked and alone in a small room, he began to become aware of what he later called "the

last of the human freedoms" -- the freedom his Nazi captors could not take away. They could control his entire environment, they could do what they wanted to his body, but Viktor Frankl himself was a

self-aware being who could look as an observer at his very involvement. His basic identity was intact.

He could decide within himself how all of this was going to affect him. Between what happened to

him, or the stimulus, and his response to it, was his freedom or power to choose that response.

In the midst of his experiences, Frankl would project himself into different circumstances, such as

THE SEVEN HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE PEOPLE Brought to you by FlyHeart lecturing to his students after his release from the death camps. He would describe himself in the

classroom, in his mind's eye, and give his students the lessons he was learning during his very torture.

Through a series of such disciplines -- mental, emotional, and moral, principally using memory and

imagination -- he exercised his small, embryonic freedom until it grew larger and larger, until he had

more freedom than his Nazi captors. They had more liberty, more options to choose from in their

environment; but he had more freedom, more internal power to exercise his options. He became an

inspiration to those around him, even to some of the guards. He helped others find meaning in their

suffering and dignity in their prison existence.

In the midst of the most degrading circumstances imaginable, Frankl used the human endowment of

self-awareness to discover a fundamental principle about the nature of man: Between stimulus and

response, man has the freedom to choose.

Within the freedom to choose are those endowments that make us uniquely human. In addition to

self-awareness, we have imagination -- the ability to create in our minds beyond our present reality.

We have conscience -- a deep inner awareness of right and wrong, of the principles that govern our

behavior, and a sense of the degree to which our thoughts and actions are in harmony with them. And

we have independent will -- the ability to act based on our self-awareness, free of all other influences.

Even the most intelligent animals have none of these endowments. To use a computer metaphor,

they are programmed by instinct and/or training. They can be trained to be responsible, but they can't take responsibility for that training; in other words, they can't direct it. They can't change the

programming. They're not even aware of it.

But because of our unique human endowments, we can write new programs for ourselves totally

apart from our instincts and training. This is why an animal's capacity is relatively limited and man's is unlimited. But if we live like animals, out of our own instincts and conditioning and conditions, out of our collective memory, we too will be limited.

The deterministic paradigm comes primarily from the study of animals -- rats, monkeys, pigeons,

dogs -- and neurotic and psychotic people. While this may meet certain criteria of some researchers

because it seems measurable and predictable, the history of mankind and our own self-awareness tell us

that this map doesn't describe the territory at all!

Our unique human endowments lift us above the animal world. The extent to which we exercise

and develop these endowments empowers us to fulfill our uniquely human potential. Between

stimulus and response is our greatest power -- the freedom to choose.

"Proactivity" Defined

In discovering the basic principle of the nature of man, Frankl described an accurate self-map from

which he began to develop the first and most basic habit of a highly effective person in any

environment, the habit of Proactivity.

While the word proactivity is now fairly common in management literature, it is a word you won't

find in most dictionaries. It means more than merely taking initiative. It means that as human beings, we are responsible for our own lives. Our behavior is a function of our decisions, not our conditions.

We can subordinate feelings to values. We have the initiative and the responsibility to make things

happen.

Look at the word responsibility -- "response-ability" -- the ability to choose your response. Highly proactive people recognize that responsibility. They do not blame circumstances, conditions, or

conditioning for their behavior. Their behavior is a product of their own conscious choice, based on

values, rather than a product of their conditions, based on feeling.

Because we are, by nature, proactive, if our lives are a function of conditioning and conditions, it is

because we have, by conscious decision or by default, chosen to empower those things to control us.

THE SEVEN HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE PEOPLE Brought to you by FlyHeart In making such a choice, we become reactive. Reactive people are often affected by their physical

environment. If the weather is good, they feel good. If it isn't, it affects their attitude and their

performance. Proactive people can carry their own weather with them. Whether it rains or shines

makes no difference to them. They are value driven; and if their value is to produce good quality

work, it isn't a function of whether the weather is conducive to it or not.

Reactive people are also affected by their social environment, by the "social weather." When people treat them well, they feel well; when people don't, they become defensive or protective. Reactive

people build their emotional lives around the behavior of others, empowering the weaknesses of other

people to control them.

The ability to subordinate an impulse to a value is the essence of the proactive person. Reactive

people are driven by feelings, by circumstances, by conditions, by their environment. Proactive people are driven by values -- carefully thought about, selected and internalized values.

Proactive people are still influenced by external stimuli, whether physical, social, or psychological.

But their response to the stimuli, conscious or unconscious, is a value-based choice or response.

As Eleanor Roosevelt observed, "No one can hurt you without your consent." In the words of

Gandhi, "They cannot take away our self respect if we do not give it to them." It is our willing permission, our consent to what happens to us, that hurts us far more than what happens to us in the

first place.

I admit this is very hard to accept emotionally, especially if we have had years and years of

explaining our misery in the name of circumstance or someone else's behavior. But until a person can

say deeply and honestly, "I am what I am today because of the choices I made yesterday," that person cannot say, "I choose otherwise."

Once in Sacramento when I was speaking on the subject of Proactivity, a woman in the audience

stood up in the middle of my presentation and started talking excitedly. It was a large audience, and

as a number of people turned to look at her, she suddenly became aware of what she was doing, grew

embarrassed and sat back down. But she seemed to find it difficult to restrain herself and started

talking to the people around her. She seemed so happy.

I could hardly wait for a break to find out what had happened. When it finally came, I

immediately went to her and asked if she would be willing to share her experience.

"You just can't imagine what's happened to me!" she exclaimed. "I'm a full-time nurse to the most miserable, ungrateful man you can possibly imagine. Nothing I do is good enough for him. He never

expresses appreciation; he hardly even acknowledges me. He constantly harps at me and finds fault

with everything I do. This man has made my life miserable and I often take my frustration out on my

family. The other nurses feel the same way. We almost pray for his demise.

"And for you to have the gall to stand up there and suggest that nothing can hurt me, that no one

can hurt me without my consent, and that I have chosen my own emotional life of being miserable --

well, there was just no way I could buy into that.

"But I kept thinking about it. I really went inside myself and began to ask, 'Do I have the power to choose my response?"

"When I finally realized that I do have that power, when I swallowed that bitter pill and realized

that I had chosen to be miserable, I also realized that I could choose not to be miserable.

"At that moment I stood up. I felt as though I was being let out of San Quentin. I wanted to yell to the whole world, 'I am free! I am let out of prison! No longer am I going to be controlled by the

treatment of some person.'"

It's not what happens to us, but our response to what happens to us that hurts us. Of course, things

can hurt us physically or economically and can cause sorrow. But our character, our basic identity,

does not have to be hurt at all. In fact, our most difficult experiences become the crucibles that forge our character and develop the internal powers, the freedom to handle difficult circumstances in the

THE SEVEN HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE PEOPLE Brought to you by FlyHeart future and to inspire others to do so as well.

Frankl is one of many who have been able to develop the personal freedom in difficult

circumstances to lift and inspire others. The autobiographical accounts of Vietnam prisoners of war

provide additional persuasive testimony of the transforming power of such personal freedom and the

effect of the responsible use of that freedom on the prison culture and on the prisoners, both then and

now.

We have all known individuals in very difficult circumstances, perhaps with a terminal illness or a

severe physical handicap, who maintain magnificent emotional strength. How inspired we are by

their integrity! Nothing has a greater, longer lasting impression upon another person than the

awareness that someone has transcended suffering, has transcended circumstance, and is embodying

and expressing a value that inspires and ennobles and lifts life.

One of the most inspiring times Sandra and I have ever had took place over a four-year period with

a dear friend of ours named Carol, who had a wasting cancer disease. She had been one of Sandra's

bridesmaids, and they had been best friends for over 25 years.

When Carol was in the very last stages of the disease, Sandra spent time at her bedside helping her

write her personal history. She returned from those protracted and difficult sessions almost transfixed by admiration for her friend's courage and her desire to write special messages to be given to her

children at different stages in their lives.

Carol would take as little pain-killing medication as possible so that she had full access to her mental

and emotional faculties. Then she would whisper into a tape recorder or to Sandra directly as she took notes. Carol was so proactive, so brave, and so concerned about others that she became an enormous

source of inspiration to many people around her.

I'll never forget the experience of looking deeply into Carol's eyes the day before she passed away

and sensing out of that deep hollowed agony a person of tremendous intrinsic worth. I could see in

her eyes a life of character, contribution, and service as well as love, concern, and appreciation.

Many times over the years, I have asked groups of people how many have ever experienced being in

the presence of a dying individual who had a magnificent attitude and communicated love and

compassion and served in unmatchable ways to the very end. Usually, about one-fourth of the

audience respond in the affirmative. I then ask how many of them will never forget these individuals

-- how many were transformed, at least temporarily, by the inspiration of such courage, and were

deeply moved and motivated to more noble acts of service and compassion. The same people respond

again, almost inevitably.

Viktor Frankl suggests that there are three central values in life -- the experiential, or that which

happens to us; the creative, or that which we bring into existence; and the attitudinal, or our response in difficult circumstances such as terminal illness.

My own experience with people confirms the point Frankl makes -- that the highest of the three

values is attitudinal, in the paradigm of reframing sense. In other words, what matters most is how we respond to what we experience in life.

Difficult circumstances often create Paradigm Shifts, whole new frames of reference by which people

see the world and themselves and others in it, and what life is asking of them. Their larger perspective reflects the attitudinal values that lift and inspire us all.

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 964