Get Proactive
Quotes
Highly proactive people don’t blame circumstances, conditions, or conditioning for their behavior. Their behavior is a product of their own conscious choice. – Stephen Covey
The way to bring about change is to be proactive and active. – Octavia Spencer
You have a choice in life. You can either live on-purpose, according to a plan you’ve set. Or you can live by accident, reacting to the demands of others. The first approach is proactive; the second reactive. – Michael Hyatt
Don’t just sit there and worry. Be proactive. Do something – anything – about what’s worrying you so you can gain information, focus and control over the situation. I’ve suffered a great many catastrophes in my life. Most of them never happened. – Mark Twain
Look at the word responsibility-“response-ability”-the ability to choose your response. Highly proactive people recognize that responsibility. They do not blame circumstances, conditions, or conditioning for their behavior. Their behavior is a product of their own conscious choice, based on values, rather than a product of their conditions, based on feeling. – Stephen Covey
Quotes courtesy of https://www.azquotes.com
Abstract
The difference between long-term success and failure are our personal responses to what happens to us and what we also strive to create daily. We can choose to be proactive or reactive to any situation that comes our way. As I always say life happens each and every day.
How we choose to respond to circumstances and situations around us marks us for greatness or mediocrity down the line. We hand over responsibility- RESPONSE – ABILITY to other individuals and we do not become the masters of our fate. We need to take our ability to respond back and be an influencer of our outcomes.
Responsibility
We are all built with the ability to respond to events. How we respond to our circumstances determines our eventual outcomes in life later on. We can choose to leave our fate to other people and usually it’s very traumatic when we do this.
We all have a benefactor in our lives at one point or the other. This may come in the form of our parents, relatives, employers or other donors. Unfortunately, over a lengthy period of time this makes as dependent and reactive over time.
If you dig deep and think about all the areas where you have failed in life the one key factor that stands out is that we were usually coasting and leaving others to make decisions on our behalf. Usually these decisions were not optimal and affected us detrimentally in the long run.
Apart from our parents there are no other individuals who will have our best interests at heart. Most decisions are made to benefit their own interests. This is a fact of life we have to face up to early enough. We have many good and evil people out there we need to be very careful in our interactions with all external parties.
Examples of Individuals who have triumphed over tough times
Ursula Burns
She is an African American who grew up in a housing project in New York raised by a single mother. She joined Xerox as an intern managed to get a masters in mechanical engineering. Her mother’s influence was in getting her to appreciate education and attend good schools wherever possible.
Roman Abramovich
The Russian billionaire and owner of the Premiership Football club Chelsea grew up as an orphan. He was raised by extended family and attended the Moscow Auto Institute. There he started a small plastics factory. He grew the business and ventured into the oil industry.
The rest is history he became one of the world’s reknown billionaires. It was a real grits rags to riches story
Ralph Lauren
Ralph Lauren the world-famous designer also grew up dirt poor. He was raised in New York joined the army and was working as a clerk in one of the department stores in New York.
He noticed tie designs were not changing and the clients desired more. He branched out n his own and designed his own ties. He made a profit of a half million dollars in one year. This was just out of selling ties. He expanded his product lines and the rest is history.
Shahid Khan
He was an immigrant to the United States of America from Pakistan. He worked as a dish washer to pay his way through college. From there he started his own companies and eventually become a successful business man.
He owns sport teams and has a never quit mentality that has sustained him through the years
Push Proactive Behavior
Be proactive in your life. Be an action taker and do what it takes to influence positive outcomes in your life. We are all blessed with talents we should not ignore. Exploit your talents and explore the big world out there.
It’s an abundant and beautiful world out there. You just have to knock on the door hard. Seek and you shall find. Be the best at what you do and go out there and do what it takes to be big.
Action
Please read the biographies of these individuals below. They rose up from the bottom to rise to their current level- John D Rockefeller, Vincent Van Gogh, Elvis Presley, Oprah, J.K. Rowling, Richard Branson, Michael Jordan, Howard Schultz, Stephen King, Abraham Lincoln,
One thing that stands out is that these individuals took action again and again despite failure after failure. They had a vision and stuck to it. They put in the work and effort to make it work. We cannot take short cuts we need to take the necessary effort to make our dreams come true.
Read
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People – Steven Covey
177 Mental Toughness Secrets of the World Class: The Thought Processes, Habits and Philosophies of the Great Ones – Steve Siebold