Are You Choosing to Answer the “phone?” | VictorSchueller.com

“You do not have to answer the telephone. You do not have to obey. You can, if you choose, totally ignore the telephone bell.” ~Maxwell Maltz

I was talking with someone the other day who was frustrated because they often let their emotions run amok within their mind, and once they got focused on a disturbing situation, they just couldn’t shake it.  It affected all facets of their life — it seemed to “bleed” into every part of their life, to the point where it was significantly disruptive.  I think more frustration was coming from the fact that they seemed to almost “instinctively”  jump into this aggravated mindset, with little required stimulus.  They were looking for some way to disrupt this somewhat “automatic” response to find some inner peace and let it go.

It reminded me of one of my absolute favorite passages from a book called Psycho-Cybernetics, A New Way to Get More Living Out of Life, by Maxwell Maltz.  This book is full of all sorts of wonderful and powerful lessons and information, and I remember taking a long time to get through it, because I felt like I was highlighting whole pages (or chapters) at a time.

The passage came from one of the lessons that explores the idea of achieving peace of mind by implementing one’s own “tranquilizer.”  Maltz says that tranquilizers don’t do anything to the environment, they change our perception of the environment.  Essentially, if we can learn to change our response to the stimuli of our environment — if we can change how we respond to what happens to us and control our response — then we can find ourselves with some peace of mind.

This is my favorite passage: “Let us suppose that as you read this, you are sitting quietly in your den. Suddenly, the telephone rings. From habit and experience, this is a “signal” or stimulus which you have learned to obey. Without taking thought, without making a conscious decision about the matter, you respond to it. You jump up from your comfortable seat, and hurry to the telephone. The outside stimulus has had the effect of “moving” you. It has changed your mental set and your “position” or self-determined course of action. You were all set to spend an hour, sitting quietly and relaxed, reading. You were inwardly organized for this. Now, all this is suddenly changed by your response to the external stimuli in the environment.

The point I wish to make is this. You do not have to answer the telephone. You do not have to obey. You can, if you choose, totally ignore the telephone bell. You can, if you choose, continue sitting quietly and relaxed-— maintaining your own original state of organization, by refusing to respond to the signal.

Maltz says that we are not actors, rather we are “reactors.”  We have the ability to choose how we react to the things that are going on in our lives.  We are always in control.  Start out relaxed, and stay that way.  We don’t always have to “answer the phone.”  And, by “ignoring the phone,” we can always maintain our original state of relaxation, without changing our mental state.

Oh, and by the way, if this is hard for you to do, you can always “delay” “picking up the phone.”  You can always tell yourself, I will give myself five seconds before I respond, and keep doing it, and doing it.  It’s one of the reasons why counting to ten before reacting usually helps de-escalate any major emotional reactions to a situation.  You are essentially “delaying” your response to the environment.

So, thinking about yourself, are you rushing to “pick up the phone?”  Can you think of ways in which you can simply “ignore” the phone, and give yourself the peace of mind and tranquility you deserve?  Let me know what you think. 🙂

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