S - Step back and observe
T – Take a few conscious breathes
A – Ask yourself what you really want
R – Respond
Instead of turning away from the urge, experiment with turning toward the urge. Try pushing back and watching your experience like a movie. As best you can, stay curious, calm and present to whatever you’re noticing– paying attention to both your surroundings and what’s going on inside – thoughts, feelings and physical sensations.
If you watch long enough, you might notice something pretty surprising: the urge changes and eventually passes.
When something triggering comes into our line of sight – especially out of the blue – what about getting good at that ninja skill of Turning Away – or what some people call “bouncing the eyes.”
Instead of letting the eyes linger, what if we learned to literally bounce the eyes like a ball away from what we don’t want to see?
As simple as it sounds, this skill can be honed, polished and refined as a killer move powerful enough to cut using off at the pass.
“Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response, and in our response lies our growth and our freedom.” -- Victor Frankl, Holocaust survivor