“When the phone rings, I ignore it. I conditioned my mind a long time ago to realize that I don’t have to react to the phone.”
– el Furecat

All of us have Pavlovian responses inside our minds. It could be a knock on the door, the phone ringing, a text message coming in or the notification of a new post on social media.

Boom. We feel we must immediately respond. 

The truth is that we have been conditioned to believe that we must respond to every ding we hear. In many ways, we’re no different than the dog in Pavlov’s experiments.

Pavlov rung the bell to let the dog know that food was being served. After doing this a few times, the dog began to salivate as soon as it heard the bell.

But there’s more to the story…

Because even when Pavlov rang the bell and food was not given, the dog still salivated. The dog expected food every time the bell rang, and its nervous system reacted the same way every time.

The dog never caught on.

Human beings respond to all sorts of bells in their environment in much the same way. We see or hear something and we react in a predictable manner. And this continues  for our entire lives… unless we take the time to make our minds quiet and change our conditioned response to something better.

I have two dogs. And they bark every time anyone comes near our house. It doesn’t matter who it is, they respond by barking. 

For quite some time, when I was reading, I used to respond to the dogs barking by closing the book, getting out of my chair and going to the door as I told the dogs to be quiet. 

I responded in a Pavlovian way to the dogs. I didn’t salivate, but I did react in a similar way to their barking.

One day I decided to change my response to the dogs. I entered the quiet room of my mind and imagined the dogs barking. As I heard them sounding off, I introduced a new mental picture of what I would do in the future. 

Instead of getting up and going to the door, I would remain calm and continue reading. And I wouldn’t say a word to the dogs. 

To my delight, the next time the dogs went nuts, I was unaffected. I continued reading. Quietly. 

All I did was change the mental imagery playing inside my head, and my response completely changed.

This situation gave me deep insight into the meaning of the phrase, “Act without doing.”

It doesn’t mean that you don’t do anything. Instead, you picture yourself doing something different, in advance of the bell being rung.

And when the bell rings (or the dogs bark), you end up doing what you pictured.

Instead of “obeying” the conditioned response inside your mind, you act in accord with the new image you are installing in your mind.

It’s easy to do, if you’re willing to stop trying. 

Picture what you want to be doing, and be amazed when you automatically begin doing it, without effort.

Let the dogs bark. Let the phone ring.

Here endeth the lesson.

Matt Furey