Circumstances occur where the unexpected or unusual is suddenly forced on you.  Surprise.  Surprises can be both pleasant and unpleasant.

Managing yourself in the face of surprise is a critical skill.  Basically, this means controlling your behaviour to ensure something you will regret or be unhappy about does not occur.

Don’t React

A critical underpinning of responding in the best possible way to a surprise is to not react based on your sub-conscious. The trigger of surprise could elicit joy, fear, confusion, anger, frustration and the list goes on.

Allowing the instinctive reaction associated with the emotion to drive your behaviour can result in less than desirable outcomes.  While time to react appropriately may be short this should not limit you from undertaking a conscious analysis.

Stop, Think

The emotional reaction could be appropriate but it could just a well be harmful.  Freezing with anger might be far less effective than pausing, thinking out  a reasoned response and then executing calmly.

Not an easy task, particularly when in some cases response times really impact results and a slow response could be deadly.  However, actions reasoned out based on full awareness are much more likely to provide a positive outcome.

Generally surprises cannot be avoided, by definition they are unexpected.  That said another way of dealing with surprise, one that gives more chance of reponding effctively, is to consider the risk of an unexpected event and plan how to mitigate it in advance.

Whether through planned risk mitigation or pausing, thinking and planning it is generally best to control your reaction as oppossed to just …….. well, reacting instinctively.