FOOD FOR THOUGHT – BE PROACTIVE

It’s a new week, last week we discussed about making mountain out of molehill, this week, I want us to know that it is very necessary to be proactive as we go through our day to days activity.

PROACTIVE: Acting in advance to deal with an expected change or difficulty.

Be Proactive means that as human
beings we are responsible for our own lives. Our basic nature is to act, and
not be acted upon. It’s instructive to break the word responsibility into two
parts – response-ability, the ability to choose your response. Highly proactive
people recognize that responsibility. They do not blame circumstances,
conditions, or conditioning for their behavior. Their behavior is a product of
their own conscious choices, based on values, rather than a product of their
conditions, based on feelings. The opposite of proactive is reactive. The
spirit of reactive people is the transfer of responsibility. Their language
absolves them of responsibility.

“That’s me. That’s just the way I am.” I am
determined. There’s nothing I can do about it.

“He makes me so mad!” I’m not responsible. My
emotional life is governed by something outside of my control.

Many behavioral scientists have
built reactive, deterministic stimulus-response models of human behavior. The
basic idea is that we are conditioned to respond in a particular way to a
particular stimulus. In contrast, the proactive model states that between
stimulus and response lies our freedom to choose our response. As human beings,
we have four unique human endowments that distinguish us from the animal world.
These endowments reside in that space between stimulus and response:

•       Self-Awareness is our capacity to take
a look at ourselves and examine our own thinking, our motives, our habits, and
our paradigms.

•       Conscience serves as our internal
guidance system, which allows us to sense when we act or even contemplate
acting in a way that’s contrary to principle.

•      
Creative
Imagination is our ability to create in our minds beyond our present
reality.

•       Independent Will is our capacity to
act, free of all other influences.

Proactive people focus their
time and energy on things they can control (their Circle of Influence) in lieu
of reacting to or worrying about conditions over which they have little or no
control (their Circle of Concern). In so doing, proactive people use positive
energy to influence conditions and increase their Circle of Influence.

They don’t have any excuse, they are ever ready. As you go about your activities this week, BE PROACTIVE