Lesson #1: Respond, don't react 🐨
How to deal with challenging situations
Tip: Respond, don’t react ✨
Take a moment to pause, audit, and edit your reaction into a response before letting it fly — especially when you’re in a tough situation or argument with someone you care about!
Tool: The 3-4-5 breathing technique 🧘🏽
This is one of the easiest ways to pause and calm yourself anytime, anywhere. It only takes 12 seconds, try it out:
Story: The Time Crunch ⏲️
Hi! It’s Koa 🐨
I thought you might want to know about a conversation I had with my friend Yoa this week:
“You don’t care about us.” Yoa scratched his ear and sighed sadly.
What? “That’s insane.”
“I am not insane.” Yoa was starting to turn orange, which made him scary. “It’s true. You’ve been so busy on your quest to collect relationship lessons, that you’ve forgotten all about us.”
I looked at Yoa sadly. “I could never forget you, Yoa.”
He scoffed. “But you have.”
I could feel my own ears turning purple, but I knew that we couldn’t both be angry at the same time. That was the fastest way to kill our friendship. So I took a deep breath and tried to imagine the situation from Yoa’s perspective. “Yoa, I’m trying my best. And it’s important to me that you feel good about our friendship. So tell me, how can I show you that I care?”
Yoa looked up with uncertain eyes. “Will you come to my birthday party next week?”
“I’ll plan your birthday party next week.”
“Really?” Yoa showed off all 32 teeth with a giant smile. “And will you write to me every day that you’re gone?”
“Maybe not every day, but definitely once a week if that’s important to you.”
“Deal. Now about taking me on your next quest…. ”
And that’s how Yoa and I got our friendship back on track. All koalas and people have problems. But all problems are solvable if we just choose to calmly find a solution together instead of letting only ugly emotions do the talking.
I hope you learnt as much as I did this week!
Until next time,
With love and bear hugs,
Koa 🥰✨