Do you react to things other people say or do in a way you wish you could do over, even when you feel righteous in your response? What if you could control your reactions a bit more and choose your responses more intentionally? In this episode, Hari Prasada interviews Vipin about his article, "How to Create Space Between Stimulus and Response." They discuss an example from Vipin’s life when he acted with anger towards his son, how his beliefs about his son and himself led to the reaction, and the difference between the beliefs of the ego versus the beliefs of the self. They conclude by sharing the framework of the Emotional Traffic Light and how we can use it to help us achieve true freedom.

Podcast Hosts: Hari Prasada Das and Vipin Goyal

Highlights

• [2:45] Victor Frankl’s quote in Man’s Search for Meaning: “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” 

• [5:30] Vipin’s realizations from his coaching session with his own coach about trying to be less reactive with his kids 

• [6:30] His coach’s insight that between stimulus and response are a set of beliefs

• [9:20] Vipin’s experience of rage in a situation with his son and what he learned from that experience

• [11:30] The benefits of “pausing the tape” and understanding the beliefs that our driving our reactions

• [14:00] The influence of the inner critic 

• [14:35] How you can have beliefs that you don't actually believe in

• [16:30] Over-reliance on pattern recognition leading to a fixed mindset

• [18:00] The beliefs of the ego versus the beliefs of the self 

• [21:05] The Emotional Traffic Light idea from Sacinandana Swami 

• [28:40] What's possible when we start putting space between stimulus and response 

• [30:00] The power of seeing people more completely as proper subjects rather than objects 

• [31:15] The desire and humility that is needed to question our normal reactions

Quotes

• “The question, ‘What were my beliefs?’ allowed me to make more sense of the space between stimulus and response.” -Vipin Goyal

• “I could see that my response was dependent on the set of beliefs about the stimulus…and that was so empowering.” -Vipin Goyal

• “There are some big costs to using pattern recognition. When we rely on pattern recognition, we can end up in more of a fixed mindset around people.” -Vipin Goyal

• “It's not just a desire to slow down, we need a practice of slowing down.” -Vipin Goyal