Act or you will be acted upon - Reactive and Proactive Speech
On my journey of Paradigm shift, today I read about the Reactive and Proactive behaviour and how it impacts us.
In the most effective manner, understand this:
Act or be acted upon
A proactive persons act whereas a reactive person gets acted upon.
In the amazing paradigm shifting book - 7 habits of highly effective people, Stephen Covey talks about Proactiveness and its importance. Being proactive means you take responsibility for your situation and take initiative to make it better. Yes no matter how unfavoring the circumstances are, you take responsibility and change the course of action with your behaviour and attitude.
I read a very simple yet clear example about these behaviour types which I narrate below: So let's a say there is a student and a teacher. I request you to read below example as if you are the student.
Student to Teacher: Sir, I will not attend tomorrow's class because I have to go to tennis game.
Teacher to student : You have to go? or you choose to go?
Student to teacher: Ummm, I have to go.
Teacher to Student: What will happen if you don't go.
Student to teacher: Ummmm they might kick me out of the team.
Teacher to student: What if, you don't come to my class?
Student to teacher: you won't kick me out, would you?
Teacher to student: No, what will you miss if you don't come in class?
Student to teacher: Umm the lesson.
Teacher to student: Right, if you don't come to my class you will miss the learning. So missing the learning is the consequence. If you don't go to tennis you might loose your social spot in the team which is the consequence in this case. So you have to choose which consequences you want to face. Its upto you, you have to choose.
Student to Teacher: Ok I choose to go to Tennis tomorrow.
The fact to notice here is - most of us use the 'I have to' rather than 'I choose to', now this talks a lot about behavioural and approach differences. There is nothing like 'I have to' in real world, it comes from a reactive person only who thinks he\she is always on the short end of the stick. A proactive person knows he has power to choose and he is choosing all his actions.