Are You Proactive or Reactive?

Are you proactive or reactive when faced with life’s challenges? Throwing your hands in the air and acting as if you have absolutely no control over what happens doesn’t do any good. That’s being reactive and staying stuck. To be proactive, take the initiative, take action with steps to face any challenge using clear and balanced confidence.

Life experiences can be stressful. Things are constantly changing, new challenges appear without notice. How you deal with these will greatly impact the effects they have on your well being. You have the choice to be proactive or reactive about life.

Sounds easy enough. Yet it just as easy to let circumstances hold you back from being all that you can be. Going from a reactive mindset to a proactive mindset will take an awareness of which mindset you’re operating from.

Because your attitude and behaviors flow out of your paradigms, if you use your self-awareness to examine them, you can often see the nature of your underlying mindset. The language of reactive people absolves them of responsibilities. Which leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy. You will end up producing evidence to support that belief. You blame outside forces for your situation.

Whenever you find yourself using words like: I can’t, it’s too hard, no one ever told me… Basically words that shift power to someone or something else instead of taking on the responsibility yourself. This is where awareness steps in. Anytime you hear yourself using these type of words, stop immediately! Remember that YOU choose how you react to experiences. You can step up and find the ways necessary to keep moving forward.

Along with being aware of the words you speak, there are many other ways to reinforce a proactive mindset. Below is a list of areas you may want to work on. It all begins within. Change your inner thoughts and you change your outside world!

Top 10 ways to be more Proactive

To become more proactive, consider the following actions to empower your life:

1. Take an honest look at yourself. What are your strengths, weaknesses, skills? How will those influence—positively or negatively—your dreams and goals?

2. Step up your self-care. Major changes are physically and emotionally taxing. You need self-care now more than ever.

3. Engage your curiosity. What went wrong, or right? What could you have done better? What worked really well?

4. Focus on what you want, and less on what you don’t want. Keep your focus on your dream.

5. Find support. You’re not alone. Connect with those people in your life who will support and encourage you.

6. Work on your thoughts. Use empowering words. Keep words like “can’t, won’t, I don’t know how, or if only” out of your vocabulary.

7. Trust yourself. Relax and remain calm. You have the tools to move through any circumstances or the resources to find those tools.

8. Create your own rite of passage. Ceremonies and rituals help ease you through changes. Since you desire to change your way of thinking, come up with a simple ceremony to release your old way of thinking. In essence, you are laying it to rest, burying it for good.

9. Let go of how things were “supposed to be” and accept “how things are.” Find appreciation for what is.

10. Keep things in perspective. Or try on a new perspective. Don’t get stuck. Keep in mind that the only constant in life is change.

Remember, life does not always unfold the way you expect it to. You can take a more proactive role in your life by understanding that you have the choice of HOW you react to experiences.

If you are facing a challenge in your life and are not sure of the steps to take in finding your balance, feel free to connect with me. We can discuss some of the ways you can move forward.

“You cannot control what happens to you, but you can control your attitude toward what happens to you, and in that, you will be mastering change rather than allowing it to master you.”
- Brian Tracy