The difference between a reflex and a response is that a reflex happens involuntary and hyper-fast:

An example of a reflex is pulling away your hand when touching a hot stove.

There is no moment when you voluntarily decide “oopsie, this stove feels a tad hot, I think I better take my hand back”, because that can already be the difference between severe burn or no burn at all.

A response, on the other hand, is a conscious choice. Like writing an email. Or deciding what to do when it’s your turn in chess.

Of course, those are just words, and ​words point to things by creating definitions of what they mean and what not​.

In reality, reflexes and responses aren’t 2 different things, but they point to different ranges in the way 2 spectrums interact (speed and agency).

Here’s what that looks like:

While not the main focus of today, let’s briefly mention the 2 words on this image which we didn’t discuss yet:

An “improvisation” is a move that happens as fast as the hand-touching stove reflex, but is still a conscious choice:

It’s the next note played by a jazz master, or the genius counter-move from a black-belt martial artist.

A “compulsion” is a slow response, that you nonetheless make involuntarily. Like reaching for your famous form of ​copium​ when you are ​highly stressed​.

These 4 moves don’t just apply to physical things (hot stoves or doctors hitting your knee with a hammer), they arise in all domains of life. Including energetic or conversational. Here are a few initial examples:

Reflex:

• Making nervous jokes to lighten the mood
• Apologizing before questioning if we did something wrong
• Lashing out at another person when we believe we are criticized
• Giving advice before the other person ever said they were looking for help

Response:

• Considering the impact of our words before speaking
• Taking the time to articulate what we’re about to say
• Letting the other person’s words sink in to fully​ grok​ their meaning
• Reflecting on what we know and don’t know before giving our opinion on something

Compulsion:

• Taking verbal revenge for a slight that happened earlier
• Giving loads of irrelevant context to make sure we’re not misunderstood
• Giving our take on an already closed topic, to release the pressure of not having shared it

Improvisation:

• ​Flirting​
• Quick, attuned wit or banter
• Saying something you absolutely shouldn’t say, and knowing the context can handle it
• Using language in a way that is inaccurate, yet conveys your message more clearly or playfully

How to Gain Agency Over Your Reactions

The low-agency side of spectrum could accurately be described as “reactive”.

A compulsion is usually a reaction to something that is already present (for example, a feeling we avoid feeling at all costs, or a desire that we chronically project our salvation on).

A reflex is a reaction to something that is imminent. This could be a threat, like on the hot stove example, or a benefit, like the salivating reflex when you smell a great dish (or see a great pair of buttocks, I don’t judge).

These are all functional, and simultaneously, it’s true that most of us would function better if we moved away from the reactive side of the spectrum and towards the agentic side—so that, for example, instead of lashing out at someone or compulsively apologizing, we can just calmly choose what we’re about to say next.

How do we do that?

There are many things that help, but let’s look at 2 today:

1) Practicing the Pause

A tiny habit that can make a huge difference is learning to pause.

Just a fraction of a moment.

Before speaking, to digest what you heard & observe your internal response to it.

Before acting, to notice the intention that gave rise to it.

The first step is holding the intention to pause at all, no matter how briefly.

Initially, the pause may be so short that all it does is give us some awareness of what it’s happening.

But with time, it evolves into a conscious breath that allows you to move from conditioning to choice.

When things get tense or heated in conflict, we often lose awareness of our self to a degree.

And that’s when the knee-jerk reflexes show up: Little moves that protect us, but often create consequences that make things worse.

If in daily life, you start practicing pausing before reacting to things, the window between what happens and how you react to it eventually expands to a point where you can replace these reflexes with responses.

2) Reactivity Is Relationship

As you practice your pause, you may notice the patterns in how you behave and slowly gain agency to rewire them.

But the question that remains is, why are the patterns there in the first place?

If you’ve ​read my book​, you know that I firmly believe the reason is always something good.

The reflexes or compulsions emerge because they are assisting you in some way.

The reasons may vary wildly, from perceiving something as an attack, guarding our social status or being attached to a certain outcome.

But what’s underneath all of this is simply our relationship to what might happen.

A hot-stove reflex is the result of relating to burning your hands as bad (seems like a healthy relationship, btw).

A call-your-partner-a-useless-piece-of-something reflex is the result of seeing whatever you think it means when you don’t do so as bad.

There are many ways to unravel why we exhibit a pattern like this (through therapy, meditation, use of substances).

But in essence, it’s a ​relational stance​ which we can shift.

One added thing you can do, once you’re used to practicing the pause, is to add in an element of ​embodiment​:

• Grip the ground with your feet and sink your weight into your legs
• Notice bodily sensations in this moment
• Take an extra breath if needed
• Center your physical balance

Why does this help?

Because anything we are chasing or avoiding through our reactivity isn’t about the thing itself, it’s about the impact.

It’s about how it would feel if the outcome were to happen, and whether that would feel pleasant or ​overwhelming​ to us.

And where would this feeling occur? In the body, of course!

By feeling more of the body and shifting our physical ​stance ​to a more stable one, we teach our system that we are capable of handling whatever might happen.

How to Integrate This Framework to Improve Your Choices

Let’s have another look the matrix I whipped up for this framework:

It would be easy to see the left side of the spectrum as bad and the right side as good.

But if you’ve spent any time reading my work, I think you already know my opinion is that each part of this matrix exists for a reason, so unless we integrate them all, something will break systemically (for better or worse).

Wherever you find yourself on this matrix at any point in time, it’s not a dysfunction but the most functional place for you to be right now:

It’s the best move accessible to you given the situation and your current ​capacity​.

That said, is there a direction we can shift in that will make our system more effective overall?

Yes, and for most people it looks like this:

1) Constantly move more of our reflexes towards becoming responses

Some reflexes are crucial for survival, but the majority of them are reacting to things the ego perceives as a survival threat (or benefit) while they are not.

Shifting the latter category to responses will make our system more effective. Because it allows us to discern when the ego is right vs. when it’s operating on illusions, then choosing a reaction based on that.

Consistently practicing the pause already works wonders with this.

Meanwhile, the value of crucial reflexes are so obvious that we wouldn’t even think of pausing at all. So that’s not at risk

2) Decrease compulsions without force

In theory, the best place to be is to remove all compulsions.

The problem is that if we try to attack our compulsions heads on, they will either become stronger or get replaced by new ones. Because the compulsion is serving an important function:

It either protects us from something painful or is trying to meet a need.

The grip of compulsions gets loosened over time by practicing pausing, feeling our body, and relating to the compulsion with ​equanimity​.

The more we allow the compulsion space to breathe—and ourselves the patience to shift our relationship to it—the more we gain agency. And it’s this increase in agency (and learning to feel what’s underneath) that eventually makes the compulsion disappear.

What about improvisation?

Improvisation is a move that naturally becomes available to us as we develop a secure relationship to the unknown.

It’s a move that transcends and integrates reflex and response by accepting that the fruits of our actions are not something we can fully control.

On the surface, it looks like mastery. On the inside, it feels like letting go.

It’s as much a conscious choice we make, as it is an act of stepping out of the way and letting the moment move us instead of deciding what should be.

While there are obviously ways to practice it (the aforemented jazz music, or aptly named improv classes), if you focus on mastering the other quadrants, it tends to emerge as a logical consequence.

It’s when this topic stops being serious and becomes yet another form of play.

P.S. One potential pitfall to be mindful of when playing with this framework is developing a performative pause

Our ego can latch on to the newfound presence and agency as a source of status and make sure everyone around us knows.

It does this by hijacking the practice of pausing and replacing it with performative pause (often comes with a loud exhale of taking plenty of space to visible pause instead of just mentally slowing down).

The problem with this is that it decreases presence and attunement while also coming with the thought “I’m so present and attuned”.

Which in turn also decreases self-connection and agency (self-connection is decreased by buying into the illusion, agency is decreased because the pause now needs to look a certain way), which in effect completely locks us out of the improvisation quadrant and moves the act of pausing itself into the compulsion quadrant.