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- CommentAuthorVS
- said CommentTimeSeptember 7th, 2007
“The crucial step in taking the path to personal effectiveness is to start from “within” and create an “inside-out” approach to improvement.”- Stephen Covey“Be Proactive” is habit #1 from Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Being proactive means taking conscious control over your life, setting goals and working to achieve them. Instead of reacting to events and waiting for opportunities, you go out and create your own events and opportunities. Instead of merely reacting to events as they happen, you consciously engineer your own events.Stephen Covey points out that there’s a gap between stimulus and response, and within that gap lies the potential for us to choose our response. Four special human endowments give us this power:1. Self-awareness
- the understanding that you do have a choice between stimulus and response. If someone insults you, you can choose not to become angry. If you are offered a donut, you can choose not to eat it.3. Creative Imagination
- the ability to visualize alternative responses. By using your imagination, you can mentally generate and evaluate different options.4. Independent Will
- You have the freedom to choose your own unique response. You aren’t forced to conform to what others expect from you.Reactive vs Proactive
While reactive persons are governed by social conditions, proactive people are driven by values and principles. Proactive people can control their feelings and are guided by internalized values and paradigms and their response to external stimuli is a value-based choice.
The Circle of Influence allows a person to focus on the things that matter to him and those where they can have power over. This is the circle of proactive people. On the other hand, reactive people focus their efforts in the wider Circle of Concern where they have no control over. Thus, reactive people get frustrated and start to blame other people’s weaknesses and the external environment over their predicament due to their perceived helplessness.
The ability to make and keep commitments lies in the heart of the Circle of Influence. Proactive people know that keeping commitments builds integrity and self-worth. Making and keeping commitments, no matter how small, build inner-integrity that leads to greater self-control. It also makes proactive people become more responsible for their actions in life.
So how can you exercise your proactivity and your human endowments to direct the course of your life (regardless of the currents), so that you intentionally create the kind of life you want instead of just drifting along?
Proactivity has many names. Tony Robbins refers to it as using your Personal Power. Brian Tracy states, “Those who don’t set goals for themselves are forever doomed to work to achieve the goals of others.” Denis Waitley juxtaposes winners make it happen vs. losers let it happen. Dr. Wayne Dyer refers to the proactive as no-limit people. Roger Dawson calls them achievers. Barbara Marx Hubbard labels them cocreators. David Allen uses the terms ready for anything and having a mind like water. The exact terms aren’t important. What matters is making the decision to start consciously directing your own life instead of being pushed along by external currents.
See also:
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: #2
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: #3
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