As I am working on my own proactive habit, I would like to shed some lights on what proactive approach towards life could bring to you. In the book “7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, Stephen Covey talks about the habit of “being proactive”. Being proactive is the difference between responding and reacting to life situations. Even though, we forget to exercise it, what gives different people different outlooks towards life is the freedom to choose the response to a circumstance. Victor Frankl, in his book, calls this “the last of human freedoms”. Between what happened to him when he was at the Nazi concentration camp and how he responded, he had that freedom to choose that response and nobody could take that away from him.
Proactivity means more than merely taking initiative. It means that instead of making our lives the result of conditions and conditioning, we can be responsible for our own lives and take charge of our conditioning. Disraeli said it clearly when he said “We are not the creature of circumstances, we are creator of circumstances”. That means instead of empowering the circumstances and let them control our lives, we could use our ability to take charge and create the circumstances that we want to see. Our basic nature is to act and not to be acted upon. Have you seen anybody being down in the mouth because somebody was rude and impolite to them? Clearly, when that happens we are taking the reactive approach by empowering other people’s weakness to control our emotions. Of course, proactive people also face that, but they are driven by values and principles rather than feelings and circumstances. In Roosevelt’s words, “No one can hurt you without your consent”. When you realize the fact that you yourself are in control of your emotions and not somebody else, then you can make the conscious choice to stay positive in the most negative circumstances. No thief can steal that freedom from you.
Moreover, proactive people work on their “circle of influence” instead of working on their “circle of concern”. Circle of concern are the things that you don’t have control over. It’s pretty common to see people waste time talking about things which they cannot really do much about like past mistakes, another person’s behavior, national debt, international politics and other problems outside. Whereas proactive people focus on “circle of influence” which are the things you can do something about. The more you work on your “circle of influence”, the more it expands and you become more effective.
Now where do you start on the road of being Proactive? I believe the first step of being proactive is to take personal responsibility for where you are in life today. You are in life today exactly where you are supposed to be because of the choices that you have made along the way which shaped your circumstances. If you think the circumstances around you have to change for you to be better, then you will wait till eternity because you and your choices created those circumstances and brought you where you are. I understand it is very hard to swallow that pill but until you can honestly say “I am what I am today because of the choices I made yesterday,” you cannot say, “I choose otherwise”. This is what is referred to as “Locust of Control” by Brian Tracy. When people have “external locust of control,” they have outside-in approach which means the conditions outside control their life. On the other hand, if people have “inside-out” approach towards life where they say anything that happens in my life is because of the choices I make and by making better choices I can change my life, this is called “internal locust of control”. Being proactive means creating that internal locust of control and understanding that unless you change the cause, you can’t change the effect, unless you change the object in-front of the mirror, you can’t change the reflection. Anytime we think that the problem is “out there”, that thinking is a problem because it suggests that things have to change before we can change. Instead, we can use our gift to analyze our own thought process and correct them.
Like Covey said” Knowing that we are responsible- “response-able”- is the fundamental leap towards making your life effective. Your ability to “think about what you think about”, if you use it, is the tool for creating proactive habits in your life.
