Proactive vs Reactive
“Proactive is a word
you won’t find in most dictionaries. It means more than merely taking
initiative. It means that as human beings, we are responsible for our own lives.
Our behavior is a function of our decisions, not our conditions. We can
subordinate feelings to values. We have the initiative and the responsibility to
make things happen.
Look at the word
responsibility- “response-ability”- the ability to respond. 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 choice, based on values, rather than a product of their
conditions, based on feeling.
Because we are, by
nature, proactive, if our lives are a function of conditioning and conditions,
it is because we have, by conscious decision or by default, chosen to empower
those things to control us.
In making such a
choice, we become reactive. Reactive people are often affected by their physical
environment. If the weather is good, they feel good. If it isn’t, it affects
their attitude and their performance. Proactive people can carry their own
weather with them. Whether it rains or shines makes no difference to them. They
are value driven; and if their value is to produce good quality work, it isn’t a
function of whether the weather is conducive to it or not.
Reactive people are
also affected by the social environment, by the “social weather.” When people
treat them well, they feel well, when people don’t, they become defensive or
protective. Reactive people build their emotional lives around the behavior of
others, empowering the weaknesses of other people to control them.
The ability to
subordinate an impulse to a value is the essence of the proactive person.
Reactive people are driven by feelings, by circumstances, by conditions, by
their environment. Proactive people are driven by values-carefully thought
about, selected and internalized values.
Proactive people are
still influenced by external stimuli, whether physical, social, or
psychological. But their response to the stimuli, conscious or unconscious, is a
value-based choice or response.
As Eleanor Roosevelt
observed, “No one can hurt you without your consent.” In the word of Gandhi ,
“They cannot take away our self respect if we do not give it to them” It is our
willing permission, our consent to what happens to us, that hurts us far more
than what happens to us in the first place.
I admit this is very
hard to accept emotionally, especially if we have had years and years of
explaining our misery in the name of circumstance or someone else’s behavior.
But until a person can say deeply and honestly, “I am what I am today because of
the choices I made yesterday,” that person cannot say, “I choose otherwise.”
-Stephen R. Covey, The
7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change
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