Why you need to start by being proactive if you want to become really effective
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This article is part of a series of articles that I’m writing as I go through the book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”. I recommend you start your reading from the first article in the series to have the full context around this journey.
Covey splits the 7 habits of highlt effective people into 3 different groups.
The first group, called Private Victory, focuses on helping individuals leaving the maturity stage of Dependence to enter the stage of Independence. It includes the first three habits:
- Be Proactive
- Begin with the End in Mind
- Put First Things First
The second group, called Public Victory, focuses on guiding us into the next maturity stage, the one of Interdepence. In this group we find the following three habits:
4. Think Win-Win
5. Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood
6. Synergize
The seventh and last Habit is an all-encompassing one that is all about continuous improvements:
7. Sharpen the Saw.
One key underlying principle in this progression is that a person needs first to achieve good results on the Private Victory front, gaining the habits that are the foundation of Independence, before moving into the next level. Public victory will then help us collaborate better with other people to achieve even greather results. Finally, the seventh habit will help us to continuously refine all the other six to achieve true mastery.
Let's have a look then at the first habit: Be Proactive
Between stimulus and response is our greatest power — the freedom to choose.
If I had to summarise the essence of proactiveness in a single sentence, that would be it. To fully understand it, we need to look back at how we've been educated and conditioned by the enviroment around us. Many of our behaviours are characterised by a reactive nature: we're in a bad mood because somebody didn't treat us well; we are not performing at our best because there is bad weather; we're divorcing from our partner because love "isn't just there" anymore.
Honestly, most of us are governed by such reactions. I'm particularly guilty of the "bad weather" one myself. You can imagine then how difficult and at the same time how enlightening it is to realise that all our feelings are actually consequences of our decisions. Literally: if somebody pisses you off, you can decide to be affected by it or just ignore it and continue your day with a smile. Did somebody hurt you? Not really. If you were hurt, that was caused by your response to what happened to you. How powerful is that?
Proactive people are the ones that exercise their ability to choose reactions to what is happening to them. In a world and a culture that is too often dominated by feelings, it's refreshing to realise that we can decide to live a different life. A life where we're proactive instead of reactive. A life where we decide how to react to stimuli, to the shitstorm that is hitting us right "at the wrong moment".
That is the essence of the word responsibility — which can be read as "response-ability": unlike the rest of the animal world, we as a human have the ability to choose our response. Highly proctive people are profoundly aware of that responsibility and put it to good use in their life.
The main lever for a proactive person is initiative. It's in our nature to act rather than to be acted upon, yet people that are still in the Dependence maturity stage might have lost that natural tendency due to conditioning and other life experiences. So, whenever you see something that bothers you, try to think about what initiative you can take to overcome the issue.
Now, there's a catch. There is actually the risk of confusing being proactive with the shallow practice of positive thinking from the Personalith Ethic described in the first article of this series. Proactivity is not about just thinking that everything will be great and then let yourself be acted upon. Proactivity is all about choosing a positive reaction to something happening, and then taking the initiative to act on it. You can definitely do that with a smile on your face, but that smile alone won't get you very far!
Proactive people take responsibility of their destiny, and that is also reflected in their language. Typically reactive people tend to absolve themselves from responsibility in the way they speak. Commonly used reactive expressions include:
There is nothing I can do about it!
He makes me so mad!
I don't have the time to dedicate myself to what I really want to do! (I have been guilty myself countless times of this one)
True proactiveness is reflected in the way people talk, with expressions such as:
I choose to do this instead of that.
I prefer to dedicate time to my family rather than going out for a drink.
I decided to ignore his/her comments instead of letting myself being hurt.
Reactive language is tempting, because it offers good excuses to not invest the energy required to build a better outcome. When we're reactive, we see ourselves as victims of the circumstances. As such we can reject any responsibility and blame our neighbour, the shitty weather or the politicians for all the suffering in our life. That approach becomes easily a self-fulfilling profecy though: by chosing ourselves in the victim position we're depriving ourselves from the ability to improve the situation, turning it in a downward spiral of pain and suffering. Ok, maybe I was exagerating a bit, but you at least get the idea now. Remember: being reactive is also a choice you're making.
Circle of Concern / Circle of Influence
One interesting way to develop awareness on how proactive we are is to look at where we focus our time, energy and attention. We all have a broad range of topics and things that concern us: climate change, paying the bills, our children's education, our career, relationship in our personal or professional life. All the thinks that we are concerned about are part of what we can call our Circle of Concern. Many things exist outside of it, but we're not concerned about them as we go along in our life.
Now, within our Circle of Concern there are things that we can control, and others for which there is very little we can do. All the stuff that we can control or even influence — Covey talks about direct and indirect control — falls in a smaller circle within our Circle of Concern that is called Circle of Influence. Looking at where we spend most of our attention and energy between the two circles is a good way to get a sense of how proactive we are.
Do we spend our time complaining about bad weather, the results of the elections or that asshole at the office that is making our like miserable? Or are we focusing our energy in deciding how to invest our time to build a better future for our kids, learning new skills or focusing on positive relationship that enrich us?
Proactive people focus their effort in the Circle of Influence, prioritising things that they can do something about.
This set of positive, responsible and constructive behaviours and actions has an overall positive impact on the circle of influence which expands. Our ability to influence what happens to us — and by extension to people around us — grows as we use it! Here again I can see the of misinterpretation by equating this with "positive attitude". Resourcefulness and Initiative is what it takes to expand your circle of Influence, not just a constant smile in your face.
Reactive people tend to focus more on the Circle of Concern, focusing on external factors they have very little control on.
The focus of reactive people is on blaming and accusing others. This generates negative energy and in turns reduces their circle of influence. To say it in a different way: the more you blame others for how miserable you think you are, the more miserable you'll actually be!
When something falls beyond your circle of influence, when you don't have either direct or indirect control over it, then the best solution is just to accept it. This reminds me of the famous "Then Why worry" video: if something is within your Circle of Influence then use your initiative and don't be worried; if something is beyound your reach, then just accept it and don't worry.
Worrying about something that bothers you won't solve your problems. It takes initiative and action to overcome your issues.
The one thing we have the biggest control on is ourselves, which is why the first habit focuses on reminding us that between a stimulus and our reaction we have the luxury of being able to use our judgment, and choose how to react.
