Impulsivity has been a common defect of character for many of us. Sometimes it involved a trivial decision like subscribing to a newspaper or a magazine that we really didn’t want. At other times our impulsive nature resulted in us making important life decisions that weren’t in our best interests. Some of us ended up in places that were unsafe, or engaging in dangerous behavior or even marrying a person that we had just met and hardly knew. We then learned that although decisions could be made quickly and impulsively, reversing them wasn’t always easy. When we finally entered the program, our tendency to make impulsive decisions did not just melt away. We really needed to begin a program of retraining. Although we intellectually now understood the dangers of making snap decisions, new neural pathways needed to replace those impulsive ones. We learned that if we took a breath and paused before we committed to something, it rarely caused the loss of the opportunity. In fact, in most situations people were perfectly willing to give us time to ponder a decision before giving them an answer. For those decisions that had to be made on the spot; better that we lose out than commit to something that would cause us pain down the road.

Personal Reflection: Do I need to work on being impulsive?