How to Be Proactive

There is a Rush lyric that talks about how “If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.” That quote, from the song “Freewill,” illustrates one of Stephen R. Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. The first principle is to be proactive.

So what does this mean? Covey explains the difference between proactive and reactive people as follows: “Proactive people spend their time and energy on things they can control, rather than reacting to or worrying about things they have little or no control over.” He describes the challenges we encounter in life as belonging to the Circle of Influence and the Circle of Concern.

Proactive vs. reactive people

Covey says that “proactive people focus their efforts on their Circle of Influence,” paying attention to “things that they can actually “do something about. That includes things like taking care of their health, raising their children, and working on fixing issues at their work.

On the other hand, reactive people “focus their efforts in the Circle of Concern–things over which they have little or no control,” Covey writes, worrying about things like “the national debt, terrorism, the weather.” Of course, we do need to pay attention to those issues, as far as being informed individual. After all, if you wear shorts in a snowstorm because you did not pay attention to the weather, you are not being proactive. So there is a balance there. But the idea is that you cannot change the weather, so it doesn’t do you any good to worry about it.

Proactive people make their own luck

Oprah Winfrey is known for saying that she doesn’t believe in luck. That is because she has been proactive in her entire career, from deciding to become a news journalist to owning her own television show to creating a magazine to starting a television network.

Proactive people like her choose not just how to get things done, but how to react when things don’t go their way. When a reactive person has to deal with a rude person, or a setback, it could ruin their day, month, or even their life. A proactive person does not take others’ bad moods personally, and will adjust when things go wrong.

Proactive people choose how to react

Eleanor Roosevelt famously said that nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent.  It is not that proactive people do not have feelings – they do – but they choose not to be governed by their feelings, the way reactive people do. Instead, as Covey notes, they are driven by values, and choose to respond to negativity in a value-based way.

Of course, doing so is not easy to do. Some ways to learn how to choose to respond, and not act like Pavlov’s dog at every response, is to read books like 7 Habits, talk to a mentor or life coach (click here to learn more about how a life coach works), in order to learn to control your response to stimuli. As Covey says, we do indeed have the power to choose how to react. There is a better way to live life, and being proactive can help you get there.