I Choose How I Respond

The Reframe

Before: "My situation determines how I feel." After: "I am free to act, not merely to be acted upon. I choose my response."

Scripture Anchor

"They have become free forever … to act for themselves and not to be acted upon." — 2 Nephi 2:26 (Book of Mormon) In plain terms: Human beings are agents, not billiard balls. Things happen to you, but your response is genuinely yours. Latter-day Saints call this agency — and consider it so central that it was worth the whole plan of life to protect it.

"Choose you this day whom ye will serve." — Joshua 24:15In plain terms: Choice isn't occasional. It's daily, and it's always available.

Between what happens and how you respond, there is a gap — and in the gap lives your agency. Adams says the frame you choose in that gap determines the feeling. The Book of Mormon grounds this in doctrine: you were built to act, not to be acted upon. Feeling like a leaf in the wind isn't humility; it's forgetting what you are.

This is not toxic positivity or emotional suppression. Grief, anger, and fear are real and allowed. Agency operates one level up: what will you do with the feeling, and which interpretation will you feed? The same lost job can be framed as ruin or as redirection — and the frame you choose becomes the road you walk.

How to Apply

When a feeling floods in, locate the gap: "event → gap → response"
Ask: "Is there a truer, more useful frame for this?" — then choose it out loud
Practice on small provocations (traffic, rude comments) to build the reflex for big ones
Refuse the passive voice about your own life: not "it made me," but "I chose"

Mantra

"I am free to act, not to be acted upon. I choose my response."

Original Reframe

Adapted from How I Feel Is My Choice (Scott Adams, Reframe Your Brain).