Giving your opponent power

No, you don’t want to help your opponent but often that is exactly what most do:

• When you opposes an incoming force directly, you are giving your opponent something solid to work on.
• When a kid clown around and you get mad, he becomes the center of attention which is exactly what he wanted.
• When someone insults you and you react to it, it gives them satisfaction that they are influencing you.
• When someone throws a punch at you, you turtle up and hope that the aggression will stop but that will just encourage them to beat you up even more.
• When handling young children, if you tell them NO to something, it actually make that “prohibited activity” even more attractive.

I am not saying that you should just take aggression or just go along with it. However, there are often more effective approaches / techniques.

Exercise
Give me a couple more examples (I want one being physical and the other being day-to-day type human interactions) of ineffective first reactions. Suggest a better response as well.
Why do you think our first ‘natural’ response suck so much? How can you change it?