Ways To Respond To Events Presented To You

Looking at the patterns of responses that you may have to events that come your way can allow you to change the way you deal with them. Some of the possible ways that a person generally treats new events that occur are presented here. The benefits or disadvantages of responding to events in each way provide you with a sense of if you might want to alter your standard response pattern. The following is a description of four response patterns:

Option 1: Ignore Them

One way to respond to external events is to ignore them almost completely, and to not allow them to distract yourself from the path you are already on. This could be thought of as one of the better ways to handle events, by not handling them at all, since they would detract from your time spent on your area of preference. If you are an artist that is half-way through a painting, and you get a call from a friend about a festival coming up on the weekend, turning it down to complete the painting sooner would likely lead you to success in artistry at a much quicker pace, as long as it was followed up upon. An item that could take a month if focused on completely may take 6 months if numerous events are attended by you during the process.

Option 2: Decide If They Are Worth It

Another way to respond to new events that pop up is to react to them as they arrive into your mental space. You might be presented with a 30-minute long video that a friend wants you to watch, and then you could decide at the time if you wanted to watch the video(which you should remember is your choice to do, as you shouldn’t feel obligated to perform all items friends recommend), without taking into account the activity you were planning to perform in that time slot. This method is beneficial in that it is somewhat helpful for people you are dealing with, but it distracts you from your priority activity, and can lead to time lost while thinking about whether to participate in and during the provided event.

Option 3: Decide If You Can Make Them Worth It

An enhanced form of the previously mentioned method is to react to new events, but to also add in advancement of one’s own interest into the event. An example of this would be being invited to a gathering, and then showing up with business cards for some of the people that you think might be interested in the service you provide. This business-minded way of responding is advantageous as it doesn’t discount the items presented by others, and at the same time allows you to further your own creations. Some other examples of this are wearing shirts that advertise one’s brand, finding your own possible future customers at an event that is focused on an unrelated topic to your work, and doing research for one’s activity using the variables present in an event, an example of which is analyzing competitive social dynamics when taking part in a soccer match.

Option 4: Let Them Overwhelm You

One method of response that tends to not be advantageous is that of being newly overwhelmed by each incoming event. This method of response tends to be cyclical in nature, as the number of undecided decisions builds up over time. A person that has this response pattern should switch over to ignoring new events, as they would benefit from the increase in free time and the reduction in anguish due to missing deadlines or disappointing others.

These methods of response each have their own advantages and/or disadvantages, as well as differing levels of social acceptability; others will not be as supportive of you if you are routinely turning down their offers to spend that time on your own growth, product, or service that you provide. If you want to switch to the more focused path that involves less acceptance of external events, it might help to keep in mind that only so much social acceptance will be lost before you are propelled higher up into the social spectrum you were originally looking to not miss out on.

Tagged as: events, new, pattern, respond, response