A secret to life is to learn to respond consciously rather than react unconsciously

• To respond is positive, to react is negative. Zig Ziglar
• Do not learn how to react. Learn how to respond. Gautama Buddha
• Silent mantra practice helps me respond rather than react. Sarah MacLean
• When you respond to life, that’s positive; when you react to life, that’s negative. Zig Ziglar
• Whether you respond to life or react to life determines how far you’re gonna go in life. Zig Ziglar
• Be conscious first of thyself within, then think and act. Sri Aurobindo
• It’s not the situation, but whether we react, or respond, to the situation that’s important. Zig Ziglar
• When you REACT you are giving away your power. When you RESPOND you are staying in control of yourself. Bob Proctor
• The conscious mind determines the actions, the unconscious mind determines the reactions; and the reactions are just as important as the actions. Stanley Jones
• Being alive is being aware, being able to be touched and moved and changed, being able to respond rather than to react, being able to see and hear. Rachel Naomi Remen
• The easiest thing is to react. The second easiest thing is to respond. But the hardest thing is to initiate. – When people ask you to tell them what to do, resist. Seth
• Our unconscious reactions come out of a locked room, and we can’t look inside that room. but with experience we become expert at using our behavior and our training to interpret – and decode – what lies behind our snap judgment and first impressions. Malcolm Gladwell
• Acceptance does not mean inaction. We may need to respond, strongly at times…From a peaceful center we can respond instead of react. Unconscious reactions create problems. Considered responses bring peace. With a peaceful heart whatever happens can be met with wisdom…Peace is not weak; it is unshakable. Jack Kornfield
• Basically, you can live your life in one of two ways. You can let your brain run you the way it has in the past. You can let it flash any picture or sound or feeling, and you can respond automatically on cue, like a Pavlovian dog resp‎onding to a bell. Or you can choose to consciously run your brain yourself. You can implant the cues you want. You can take bad experiences and sap them of their strength and power. You can represent them to yourself in a way that no longer overpowers you, a way that “cuts them down” to a size where you know you can effectively handle things. Tony Robbins

.

Awareness helps us to respond rather than react

• The more conscious we are, the more freedom of choice we experience. Tim Freke
• Man’s task is to become conscious of the contents that press upward from the unconscious. Carl Jung
• Mindfulness is a state wherein one is totally aware in any situation and so always able to respond appropriately. Philip Kapleau
• I realized that the more awareness I have, the more choice I have in how I create or respond to the circumstances of my life. Shakti Gawain
• Awareness is like bringing a light to the darkness of mindless reactions. Once you can see them more clearly, you can choose to respond more skillfully. Bob Stahl
• Mindfulness gives you time. Time gives you choices. Choices, skillfully made, lead to freedom. You don’t have to be swept away by your feeling. You can respond with wisdom and kindness rather than habit and reactivity. Henepola Gunaratana
• People who do not see their choices do not believe they have choices. They tend to respond automatically, blindly influenced by their circumstances and conditioning. Mindfulness, by helping us notice our impulses before we act, gives us the opportunity to decide whether to act and how to act. Gil Fronsdal

.

Awareness allows us to make more conscious choices …

• Awareness precedes choice and choice precedes results. Robin S. Sharma
• The more conscious we are, the more freedom of choice we experience. Tim Freke
• Without awareness there is no freedom. Awareness is vital for any possibility of free choice. Simon Boylan
• Between stimulus and response, you have the freedom to choose your response based on self-awareness, your imagination, your conscience and your independent will. Stephen Covey
• Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space lies our freedom and power to choose our response. In those choices lie our growth and our happiness. Stephen Covey
• Your choices are really very limited. They are limited by your level of awareness. If you can change your level of awareness radically, then you can change your destiny. Frederick Lenz
• In the place of stillness, rises potential. From the place of potential, emerges possibility. Where there is possibility, there is choice. And where there is choice, there is freedom! Gabrielle Goddard
• Every human has four endowments- self-awareness, conscience, independent will and creative imagination. These give us the ultimate human freedom… The power to choose, to respond, to change. Stephen Covey
• With awareness, we have choice, the freedom to choose, free will. It is choice that gives us power. Power which is energy. Energy that allows us to move forward in alignment with our choices. Laura Kangas
• We are conscious co-creators in the evolution of life. We have free will. And we have choices. Consequently, our success is based on our choices, which are, in turn, totally dependent on our awareness. Bruce H. Lipton
• With awareness there comes choice. And so you are able to say: “I allow this moment to be as it is”. And then, suddenly, where before there was irritation, there is now a sense of aliveness and peace. And out of that comes right action. Eckhart Tolle
• We create our own destiny with our choices and decisions. We can base these decisions upon the awareness of our inner truth or we can base them on reactions to outer circumstances. This power always belongs to us. No one can take it from us. Gail Pursell Elliott
• Silence allows you to watch your mind and become aware of the thoughts that you may be acting on unconsciously. When you see the thoughts, you can make a conscious choice to act on the thought or change your mind, instead of going along with the noise. Sivananda Radha Saraswati
• Becoming mindfully aware of the stories we spin about our physical discomfort quiets and steadies the mind so that the “mud” settles and we can see the thoughts more clearly. Then we have a choice. We can continue to blindly believe them or we can calmly assess their validity. Toni Bernhard, J.D.
• In the space between stimulus (what happens) and how we respond, lies our freedom to choose. Ultimately, this power to choose is what defines us as human beings. We may have limited choices but we can always choose. We can choose our thoughts, emotions, moods, our words, our actions; we can choose our values and live by principles. It is the choice of acting or being acted upon. Stephen Covey

.

… creating a greater sense of control over our lives …

• What you are aware of you are in control of; what you are not aware of is in control of you. Anthony de Mello
• Your life is the sum result of all the choices you make, both consciously and unconsciously. If you can control the process of choosing, you can take control of all aspects of your life. Robert F. Bennett
• Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate. Carl Jung
• All it takes for generosity to flow is awareness. By actively pursuing awareness and knowledge, we can make choices that cause less harm and greater good to others in the global community of our shared earth. Zoe Weil
• That which we do not bring to consciousness appears in our lives as fate. Carl Jung

.

The more conscious we are, the more free we become …

• Freedom begins as we become conscious of it. Vernon Howard
• The more conscious we are, the more freedom of choice we experience. Tim Freke
• We are enslaved by anything we do not consciously see. We are freed by conscious perception. Vernon Howard
• What you are aware of you are in control of; what you are not aware of is in control of you. Anthony de Mello
• Freedom is not a reaction; freedom is not a choice. . Freedom is found in the choiceless awareness of our daily existence and activity. Jiddu Krishnamurti
• There are very few joys in life greater than spontaneity. Spontaneity means to be in the moment; it means acting out of your awareness, not acting according to your old conditionings. Rajneesh
• The first step toward personal freedom is awareness. We need to be aware that we are not free in order to be free. We need to be aware of what the problem is in order to solve the problem. Don Miguel Ruiz
• It may be that we are puppets-puppets controlled by the strings of society. But at least we are puppets with perception, with awareness. And perhaps our awareness is the first step to our liberation. Stanley Milgram
• It is unimaginably hard to remain conscious, attentive, and aware. It is difficult not to fall back into a trance-like state, surrounded by the trappings and obstructions of the tiring world around us—but it is crucial to do so, for this is
• Human freedom involves our capacity to pause between the stimulus and response and, in that pause, to choose the one response toward which we wish to throw our weight. The capacity to create ourselves, based upon this freedom, is inseparable from consciousness or self-awareness. Rollo May
• Engagement is the conscious inhabitation of your body and mind. Practice is happening when your open awareness is moving with, in and through your embodied activity. Intrinsic to practice is your conscious participation with your life. Engagement is the conduction of your free and open awareness through your activities, whatever they may be. Robert McNamara
• The freedom to chose one’s actions and the ability to determine one’s own nature and future development may admit of many interesting variations and degrees rather than being a simple all or nothing matter, and various forms or levels of consciousness might be correlated with corresponding degrees or types of freedom and self-determination. Robert Van Gulick
• You and I are infinite choice-makers. In every moment of our existence, we are in that field of all possibilities where we have access to an infinity of choices. Some of these choices are made consciously, while others are made unconsciously. But the best way to understand and maximize the use of karmic law is to become consciously aware of the choices we make every moment. Deepak Chopra
• Choice implies consciousness – a high degree of consciousness. Without it, you have no choice. Choice begins the moment you disidentify from the mind and its conditioned patterns, the moment you become present….Nobody chooses dysfunction, conflict, pain. Nobody chooses insanity. They happen because there is not enough presence in you to dissolve the past, not enough light to dispel the darkness. You are not fully here. You have not quite woken up yet. In the meantime, the conditioned mind is running your life. Eckhart Tolle

.

… free to unfold our lives as we consciously wish

• Whatever you dwell on in the conscious grows in your experience. Brian Tracy
• Your most important asset is the conscious control of your own life. Eric Butterworth
• We are still masters of our fate. We are still captains of our souls. Winston Churchill
• Our experience of life is determined by us, either consciously or unconsciously. Sadhguru
• The more conscious we become the more consciously we choose that which we set in motion to create. Caroline Myss
• When you are a master of your choices, you are not slave to impulses, bad habits, and the whims of other people. Joe De Sena
• If you are not consciously directing your life, you will lose your footing and circumstances will decide for you. Michael Beckwith
• A life lived of choice is a life of conscious action. A life lived of chance is a life of unconscious creation. Neale Donald Walsch
• I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor. Henry David Thoreau
• Your life mainly consists of 3 things! What you think, What you say and What you do! So always be very conscious of what you are co-creating! Allan Rufus
• It’s strange, I think, the way our lives turn out. Moments of circumstance, when later combined with conscious decisions and actions and a boatload of hope, can eventually forge a future that seems predestined. Nicholas Sparks
• As far as inner action is concerned, we are only rarely truly self-determined persons, for the major part of our conscious mental activity rather is an automatic, unintentional form of behavior on the sub-personal level. Thomas Metzinger
• Your mind creates everything. Your conscious mind has much greater power than you can ever imagine. Your mind can create blessings or disasters, can heal or harm, can bring abundance or absence. It is up to your mind whether the world looks hopeful or hopeless. Ilchi Lee
• As a spirit having a human experience, you can choose to not merely exist but to be fully conscious and aware of living in a limited world. When you take a conscious part in life and its multitudes of choices, you won’t let life happen to you – you will make life happen for you. James Van Praagh
• … my life has been dedicated to my growth and evolution as a conscious being. … becoming more aware of all that was taking place within me and around me; how my inner world affected my outer world and vice versa. I realized that the more awareness I have, the more choice I have in how I create or respond to the circumstances of my life. Shakti Gawain

.

True listening also helps us to respond rather than react

• Become better listeners. Practice the art of listening in everything you do. Not just listening to yourself and your body, but listening to the people around you, listening to the plant world, the animal world. Really open your ears to what’s coming at you. From there, see if you can have the ability to respond instead of react. And that usually comes with listening. If the observation and the listening are deep, then your action will be deep also. Rodney Yee