The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (Habit 1: Be Proactive)

I got this from the reading material used in the Reading period in GESS last Wednesday. A very interesting and insightful read for everyone. This is taken from http://www.stephencovey.com/7habits/7habits-habit1.php

Habit 1: Be Proactive
Your life doesn’t just happen. Whether you know it or not, it is carefully designed by you. The choices, after all, are yours. You choose happiness. You choose sadness. You choose decisiveness. You choose ambivalence. You choose success. You choose failure. You choose courage. You choose fear. Just remember that every moment, every situation, provides a new choice. And in doing so, it gives you a perfect opportunity to do things differently to produce more positive results.

Habit 1: Be proactive is about taking responsibility for your life. You can’t keep blaming everything on your parents or grandparents. Proactive people recognize that they are “response-able”. They don’t blame genetics, circumstances, conditions, or conditioning for their behaviour. They know they choose their behaviour. Reactive people, on the other hand, are often affected by their physical environment. They find external sources to blame for their behaviour. If the weather is good, they feel good. If it isn’t, it affects their attitude and performance, and they blame the weather. All of these external forces act as stimuli that we respond to. Between the stimulus and the response is your greatest power – you have the freedom to choose your response. One of the most important things you choose is what you say. Your language is an indicator of how you see yourself. A proactive person uses proactive language – I can, I will, I prefer, etc. A reactive person uses reactive language – I can’t, I have to, if only. Reactive people believe they are not responsible for what they say and do – they have no choice.

Instaed of reacting to or worrying about conditions over which they have little or no control, proactive people focus their time and energy on things they can control. The problems, challenges, and opportunities we face fall into two areas – Circle of Concern and Circle of Influence.

Proactive pepole focus their efforts on their Circle of Influence. They work on the things they can do something about: health, children, problems at work. Reactive people focus their efforts in the Circle of Concern – things over which they have little or no control: the national debt, terrorism, the weather. Gaining an awareness of the areas in which we expend our energies in is a giant step in becoming proactive.