Day 51 — The 7-40 Challenge

February 25, 2026

Zig Ziglar once made a distinction that I think about more than I probably should. He said there’s a difference between responding and reacting. If you go to the doctor and they give you a medicine and ask you to come back in a few days, you want to hear them say, “Your body is responding to the treatment.” That means it’s working. If they say your body is reacting to the treatment, that means something’s gone wrong and they need to try something else.

Responding means something thoughtful is happening. Reacting means something unplanned is happening. A response flows from something pre-programmed inside of you. A reaction is something that happens in a moment.

I’ve been on both sides of this more times than I’d like to admit.

Over 27 years of marriage, there have been plenty of moments where my wife has said something, and I heard it wrong. Not because she said it wrong, but because I skipped the step where I consider context, intention, and the fact that this is a person who loves me and has been proving it for nearly three decades. Instead of processing what she actually meant, I jumped to how it made me feel. And then we had to spend the next thirty minutes untangling a reaction that never needed to happen in the first place.

Even with the people we love most, we sometimes forget to use who they are as a filter. We forget to give them the benefit of the doubt — that maybe they’re having a bad day, or maybe they just said something in a way that hit us sideways. A response gives them that grace. A reaction doesn’t.

On the other end, I had a moment at work not long ago where someone from a different department walked into my office and essentially started unloading on me. They were upset. Really upset. But I knew they weren’t mad at me. I knew I wasn’t even the reason they were venting. So I smiled. I kept asking questions. I let the storm blow over. And when it was done, I offered to help fix the problem going forward.

Had I matched energy for energy, nothing productive would have come out of that conversation. Just two frustrated people making each other worse. But something was pre-programmed in me that kicked in before the reaction could: I’m not going to let other people dictate how I act. I choose to show kindness. I choose reserve.

Now, a moment of honesty. I owe my bride the same. For the times I haven’t my darling, I ask for your forgiveness.

That’s what responding looks like. It’s not weakness. It’s not letting people walk on you. It is not assuming the worst and starting from that place. It’s having something already built inside you that catches the moment before it spirals.

Which brings me to something I’ve noticed 51 days into this challenge. The daily habit structure hasn’t necessarily made me better at handling unexpected problems. But it has made me better at keeping focus when problems show up. Good days or bad days, there’s a certain set of things I’ve committed to getting done. And I just do them. If something throws me off, I adjust the plan — but it’s because I planned the adjustment, not because I panicked.

Yesterday was a good example. I sat down, read some current events, and felt the weight of the world land on me. The kind of weight that makes your own goals feel small. My agency felt like it was shrinking. And the resistance — the part of your brain that’s always looking for a reason to stop — grabbed onto that feeling and tried to run with it.

But instead of spiraling, I was able to name it. I could identify what I was feeling and why. I could remind myself that aside from being the person I’m supposed to be, there’s not a ton I can do to affect the greater world. I have to control what I can control, be an inspiration to the people around me, and leave the rest to God.

That’s a response. A reaction would have been closing the laptop, skipping the creative hour, and telling myself none of this matters anyway.

So if you’re someone who feels stuck in reactive mode — where everything feels urgent, every problem is a crisis, every headline sends you spinning — here’s what I’d ask you: What can you actually do today to make your situation better? Not the world’s situation. Yours. What to-do list can you write right now that moves you toward something that matters to you?

I think what a lot of people forget in our current crisis culture is that we’re human. We have basic needs. And one of them is a sense of accomplishment — the feeling that we can do something and do it well. When we lean into excellence, when we focus on working through the things we can actually control, we give ourselves less room to react and more room to respond.

And yes, my faith is all over this. My belief in God, my relationship with Jesus, my daily Bible reading — they ground me in something bigger than the world around me. Bigger than current events. In my view, there’s nothing bigger than my God. And when I take that perspective and look at the problems around me, I don’t see political sides or cultural battles. I see people who are hurting. People who need help. People to serve.

That’s the filter. That’s the pre-programming. And it changes what you see when the storm walks through your door.