By Noelle Capobianco and Sophia Demetriades
Being Proactive is about taking responsibility for your life. You can read about this in Stephen Covey’s book ‘the 7 habits of highly effective people’. He stresses the importance of the choices that you make, in which every moment provides a choice that can produce positive results. In his book, Stephen outlines 7 healthy habits to guide you through life, starting with being proactive. These are the habits are:
1. Be Proactive
2. Begin with the End in Mind
3. Put first things first
4. Think win-win
5. Seek first to understand, then to be understood
6. Synergize
7. Sharpen the saw
Be Proactive
To first habit to be proactive is an integral habit in highly effective people as it allows them to take unconditional responsibility within all endeavors from personal life to the business sphere as they choose their own choice and own that choice that they make for their own behavior. The greatest power for an individual is the freedom to choose your response.
Language is a powerful tool to people as it allows people the freedom to choose what they say. Proactive people will say proactive things that concentrate on what they can or will themselves to do positively. This highly contrasts to reactive people that are easily affected by the external environment and blame others without taking any responsibility for their own behavior and choices. Reactive people will use language that they feel that they have to say, that they have no choice in.
The Circle of Influence and Circle of Concern
Proactive people will focus their energies on what is controllable and attainable. The areas of concern and opportunities that people face on a daily basis fall into two categories being Circle of Concern and Circle of Influence. The Circle of Influence is the category that proactive people focus their time and energy on as it allows them to work on issues they have control over such as health, children, work issues and relationships.
This differs to reactive people as they focus their energies on the Circle of Concern that are the situations they have no or little control over such as national security, terrorism, the weather etc. Being aware of the areas that we concentrate and focus of time and energies in will allows us to become more proactive people on the choice we make.
The other habits that Stephen Covey mention within his book concentrate on how to be a proactive person through behavior, mindset, reflection and integration of all positive attributes to progress from effectiveness to Greatness being the eighth ultimate habit that all highly effective people should become. Stephen Conveys book stresses the importance of establishing the right mindset in order to become successful by embedding these habits into the choices we make that will allow us to produce positive results.
Stephen Covey is one of the worlds most well known authors within management, literature, business, science and more- perhaps it’s worth taking his word for it.
This week, be proactive.
