A good friend of mine made an irreversible emotional decision this week. It was the right decision, but how she made it was impulsive and clouded in anger. The right decision was made for the wrong reasons, and the way it was announced can never be repaired to improve it. The memory of this moment won’t be a good memory when it should be one of those memories you look back on with pride and joy.
Instead of doing things in the heat of the moment, we all need to abide by the 24-hour rule. When you are emotional and recognize that you are reacting to a situation, remind yourself to take a step back and give yourself 24 hours to deal with the emotions and situation instead of reacting in the moment.
There is a difference between reacting and responding.
Reacting is impulsive, and you have no choice. When the car in front of me stops quickly and unexpectedly, I react and hit my brakes.
What I do next is up to me.
If I decide to stay in reaction mode, I can curse, honk my horn, or drive aggressively past the offender and give them a dirty look.
If I decide to respond, I will take a deep breath, remind myself that I am fine, and recognize that in the big picture, this moment won’t matter in 30 seconds. I choose to move from react to respond. I chose to stay calm and respond instead of reacting.
However, sometimes, once the moment is over, we recognize that it will matter in the future, and we need to say or do something about it. That’s where the 24-hour rule comes in.
If I didn’t hit my brakes fast enough and hit the driver in front of me, this situation will matter in the future. I need to quickly calm myself down so that I don’t do anything I regret. I know I can handle the damage to my car later, and I don’t want this situation to escalate into something worse than a car accident. I will react, quickly respond, and deal with the situation over the next few days or weeks. Twenty-four hours from the accident will look very different to me.
In fairness, this situation has never happened to me, and I’m guessing I might not be calm in the moment. But what I’m not going to do is jump on social media, call all my friends, or give an interview to the local television station while I’m in reaction mode. I will wait before I even let my children know what happened. I’m going to give myself that space of time to get control over how I respond to the situation.
In the past few weeks’ blogs, we’ve discussed when to avoid, confront, or postpone a confrontation. Postponing is often the best answer, and the 24-hour rule comes into those scenarios. Postponing allows you to compose yourself and plan out what you plan to say and do at a time when you aren’t reacting. Postponing is responding to the situation instead of reacting.
Assume you are in a team meeting when the CEO walks in with announcements of cutbacks. 40% of the jobs in the company will be cut, and they will be announced in the coming weeks. During their announcement, they indicated they aren’t identifying who or what departments at this time.
Your ears start to ring, your heart beats faster, and major panic sets in. The new car payments you just started make your stomach flip. You are in reaction mode.
And this is a situation that will matter in the future. You don’t want to stay in reaction mode as you are in fight-or-flight and know you must take a deep breath and eliminate the panic. And you need to talk to your manager about it, but now is not the time.
The 24-hour rule tells you that you need to take 24 hours before you have the conversation so that you don’t react impulsively, don’t say or do anything you’ll regret, and keep your reputation intact.
You will have a one-on-one chat with your manager. You likely won’t bring up your new car payment because you took the time to decide what you want to say and do, and your debt has nothing to do with keeping your job in times of cutbacks.
In the reaction stage, we weren’t logical or rational. By taking 24 hours, we can take a step back and decide the best approach for the situation.
We won’t always do it. Sometimes, emotions win even when we know better. But if we remind ourselves of the 24-hour rule regularly, we can save ourselves a situation of two where we are proud of how we handled it instead of regretting how we handled it.
I’m willing to bet my friend would like her moment back. I’ll bet if she had planned it, the situation would look entirely different. The anger and frustration will always remain, but the memory of the announcement would have a different feeling.
