Respond, don't react.
Something I need to work on in BJJ is responding. Someone moves, I react before I understand what they’re actually trying to do. I defend the wrong attack. I give up position solving a problem that wasn’t the real threat.
Higher belts have this quality of stillness. Something happens, and there’s a beat where they’re just… seeing. Then they respond to what’s actually happening, not what they assumed was happening.
The Stoics called it the hegemonikon – the ruling faculty. The part of you that chooses how to interpret and respond to what happens. Between stimulus and response, there’s a space. The quality of your life depends on what you do in that space.
The discipline is catching yourself. Creating the pause. Asking “what’s actually happening here?” before “what should I do about it?”
Respond, don’t react.
I don’t think this is a skill you develop once and have forever. Every new system, every new context, the instinct to react comes back. It’s a practice, not an achievement.
But every time you catch yourself – every time you insert the pause – you get slightly better at using the space. And the space is where the good decisions live.