Stephan Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People defines Habit #1 - Be Proactive, as, “...taking responsibility for your life.” In other words, one has the ability to create, positive or negative, future events and situations in their own life. It is very easy to blame external forces for unfavorable events or situations we experience in our lives. According to Covey, the only person to blame is ourselves. The opposite of being proactive is being reactive. This concept clarified this habit for me. Reactive people are ready to blame other people or things, never looking in the mirror. On the other side, proactive people, look in the mirror, and understand that they have the freedom and ability to choose their actions and words that will determine the result.
My Habit
Am I proactive or reactive? This is a good question. The answer will depend on if I’m talking about my personal or professional life. As I’m writing this, it is sounding weird. How can I be one way at home and different at work? Easy. In my professional life, for the most part, I am proactive. Since the day I started working in my freshman year of high school, to this day, my job has been an vital part of my life. Therefore, I recognized that being reactive could be detrimental to the future of my job. So, I knew I must be responsible and make decisions to ensure that I would succeed at my job/career. On the other side, as a young adult, I experienced some difficult situations. I couldn’t understand why I was encountering all these obstacles. Instead of attempting to understand these circumstances and attempt to change them, it was easier to place the blame elsewhere. When my daughter was four years old, I became a single parent. Soon after, I realized that my only option was to take control of my life. I must be the change that I want to see.
My commitment
I’m making a personal commitment to teach Habit #1 - Be Proactive to my daughter. She is currently in her second year of college. She has big dreams of having a successful life in law enforcement and continue playing basketball at a four year university. In the past two years, I have seen a positive change in her, in regards to her attitude and decisions she has made to get her closer to attaining her goals. We’ve had a few conversations, in which she shares her connections between the work and effort she puts into something and the positive outcomes. Yet, I don’t think she realizes that being proactive, is a characteristic that should be true in all parts of your life. I want to teach her the difference between being proactive and being reactive by sharing some personal stories from my youth. In addition to discussing about habit #1, I plan to continue modeling proactive behavior.
“We are what we repeatedly do.
Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” Covey
Covey, S. (n.d.). The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People Habit 1 Be Proactive. Retrieved September 1, 2015. https://www.stephencovey.com/7habits/7habits-habit1.php.