BE PROACTIVE

You are the creator. You are in charge

You are not your feelings. You are not your mood. You are not your thoughts.

You’ve been given one of the greatest gifts  – self-awareness. This is what separates you from the animals. It allows you to think about your thinking, to looks at yourself from perspective.

The Social Mirror

How do you see yourself? How does your family see you? How does you friends see you?How does your co-workers see you? How different or a like those images are?

Stimulus & Responce

Self-awareness is one of our greatest powers that allow us to be an observer of the what is happening to us. It allows us to decide what is going to affect us and what’s not.

Between stimulus and response is our greatest power – the freedom to choose.

In that freedom we can operate with imagination – the ability to transfer outside of our minds, the present moment. Conscience – an understanding of what’s right or wrong, based on our principles. The will – ability to act.

This unique super-powers  allow us to reprogram our instincts and reactive responses. This is what makes human potential unlimited.

Reactive or Proactive?

When you realize that you are the only one responsible for your own life, you become proactive. Responsibility literally means “response-ability” – the ability to choose your response to the stimulus.

Stop blaming other people, circumstances and conditions. Don’t empower external things to control you, don’t be reactive. It’s not what happens to us, but our response to what happens to us that hurts us.

No one can hurt you without your consent. They can not take away our self respect if we don’t give it to them . Eleanor Roosevelt

Proactive people’s language:

  • Let’s choose a different approach;
  • Let’s search for alternatives;
  • I control my feelings and emotions;
  • I will choose appropriate response;
  • I don’t know how, but I will make it happen;
  • I choose;
  • I decide;
  • I will…

Reactive people are affected by the weather. I don’t feel good, because the weather sucks today. They affected by other people, the social environment. No one loves me, so I feel sad. External factors do not matter, your response is what you should focus on.

Reactive people’s language:

  • There is nothing I cad do;
  • I am not responsible;
  • That’s just the way I am;
  • He makes me so mad;
  • They won’t allow that;
  • I will be happy when … ;
  • If I only had … ;
  • I have to do that;
  • I can’t;
  • I must;

Listen to your language and choose the words carefully. Don’t empower the external things to control you. Listen to your thoughts and every time we think the problem is “out there”, that thought is the problem. Think proactively and switch to thinking inside-out: I can be smarter, I can be more resourceful, I can be stronger, I can be more disciplined … Work on be. It is so easier to blame everyone and everything around you for your own failures. But you are the only one responsible for everything that happens to you, remember? And more important, you are response-able. If you really want to change something in your life, you have to work on the main thing you always have control over – yourself.

Reactive people make the love a feeling, as they are driven by feelings.

Love is a verb.

Serve, sacrifice, listen, appreciate, affirm, empathize, love your partner.

Initiative

It takes the initiative to improve your life. It takes the effort to recognize, eliminate the habits that don’t serve you and develop the one that improve the quality of your life.

Do you let the circumstances and conditions act on you or you will take the initiative and be proactive. Ask yourself: How do I want to respond to this? What am I going to do about it? How can I be proactive in this situation?

Don’t focus on the things that you have no control over, but work on the things that you can do something about.

There are three types of problems depending on how much control we have over them:

  • Direct control (problems that are caused by our own behavior);
  • Indirect control (other people caused it to happen);
  • No control (they probably already happened in the past or will in future). Smile, accept and learn to live with them;

Commitments

All the commitments and promises you make and keep, are the clear indication of the level of your proactivity. As you become more conscious and self-aware, you discover your own weaknesses and areas that need to be developed.  You start making promises, setting goals. If you keep those promises, if you work hard and achieve the goals you set – you build the character.

The fastest way to to put yourself in control of your own life is to make a promise and keep it; set a goal and accomplish it. This gives us power over our lives and the things that we experience in it.

References:

COVEY, S. R. (2004). The 7 habits of highly effective people: restoring the character ethic. New York, Free Press.