Reactive To Proactive Quotes

You can’t selectively numb your anger, any more than you can turn off all lights in a room, and still expect to see the light.

The human mind is generative, creative, proactive, and reflective -- not just reactive.

Through our constant connectivity to each other, we have become increasingly reactive to what comes to us rather than being proactive about what matters most to us.

The ability to subordinate an impulse to a value is the essence of the proactive person. Reactive people are driven by feelings, by circumstances, by conditions, by their environment. Proactive people are driven by values—carefully thought about, selected and internalized values.

Proactive people focus their efforts in the Circle of Influence. They work on the things they can do something about. The nature of their energy is positive, enlarging and magnifying, causing their Circle of Influence to increase. Reactive people, on the other hand, focus their efforts in the Circle of Concern. They focus on the weakness of other people, the problems in the environment, and circumstances over which they have no control. Their focus results in blaming and accusing attitudes, reactive language, and increased feelings of victimization. The negative energy generated by that focus, combined with neglect in areas they could do something about, causes their Circle of Influence to shrink.

I can wait for life to shape me in whatever manner it chooses. Or I can shape me to make life whatever I choose.

Be proactive not reactive, for an apparently insignificant issue ignored today can spawn tomorrow's catastrophe.

If you're proactive, you focus on preparing. If you're reactive, you end up focusing on repairing.

Getting stuck is reactive, getting unstuck is proactive.

With reactive boundaries, you fight the friend who constantly bugs you. With proactive boundaries, you decide you don’t need that kind of a friend.

Much of life must go by without comment.

Don't be carried away by the current of the situation. Focus on the essentials, take action on the best alternative are the ways of shifting from reactive to proactive mindset.

If you don't make a conscious effort to visualize, who you are and what you want to become in life, then you empower other people and circumstances to shape your journey by default. Your silence makes you reactive vs. proactive. God will bring people in your life that can take you on many different journeys that will bring about different outcomes to your life mission. However, if you are not proactive and define your dreams you will never know where “you” need to be and who needs to be with you to fulfill what God is asking you to do. Your life is your own. You must define your dreams, not live someone else’s vision of a good life. What is it that God is asking you to do with the talents and hobbies you enjoy? What were you blessed with a desire for? A good life is one spent in the service of helping others. Find a life partner that will help you reach God’s highest potential—service to humanity, service to his Kingdom, service to building others up. Also, begin any choice with the end in mind. This means to begin each day with a clear vision of your desired direction. It is not enough to live a passive life of religious devotion. God asked you to do more than worship. He has called you to serve, not to be a servant to other people’s dreams. You and only you know where your heart must travel. God brings you storms in life to wake you up. Don’t see it as his disappointment, but as his parental love for you. Life was not meant to stay the same. If someone truly loves you they will never take you away from God’s plan, they will only magnify it.

It’s reactive, not proactive. We shouldn’t be sitting back, waiting for intelligence to come to us: we should be out there looking for it.

Exceptional customer service proactively manages your brand and reactively can turn upset customers into raving fans based on how you handled their complaint.

In the face of great challenges, you can choose to live reactively as a victim, or choose to proactively take control, with awareness and accountability.

Our approach to existential risks cannot be one of trial-and-error. There is no opportunity to learn from errors. The reactive approach — see what happens, limit damages, and learn from experience — is unworkable. Rather, we must take a proactive approach. This requires foresight to anticipate new types of threats and a willingness to take decisive preventive action and to bear the costs (moral and economic) of such actions.

Today you can be inactive, reactive, or proactive! Choose your "active" wisely.

The reason my life has wandered to nowhere is likely due to the fact that the focus of the moment has dictated the destination of my life, when the destination of my life should have been dictating the focus of the moment.

Specifically, it’s our routine (or lack thereof), our capacity to work proactively rather than reactively, and our ability to systematically optimize our work habits over time that determine our ability to make ideas happen.

Women always have the prerogative to change their minds. Men must be resolute. Proactive and Reactive Pseudo-Friendship Rejections: LJBF rejections – “I already have a boyfriend” (boyfriend disclaimers) or “I’m not interested in a relationship right now” rejections.

It’s time to stop blaming our surroundings and start taking responsibility. While no workplace is perfect, it turns out that our gravest challenges are a lot more primal and personal. Our individual practices ultimately determine what we do and how well we do it. Specifically, it’s our routine (or lack thereof), our capacity to work proactively rather than reactively, and our ability to systematically optimize our work habits over time that determine our ability to make ideas happen.

When we are blinded by our frustration and devastation we become oblivious to the life preserver floating inches away from us. If we take a minute to think positive, utilize our faith, and become proactive, we are able to think rationally and clearly. We then will recognize the life preserver which will keep us afloat and help us get to our destination.

I don’t know what I’ll do until I know what you’ll do. I’m proactive with my preemptive reactive strategy.


A leader is paid to do three things: Get the job done and get it done well. Plan ahead—be proactive, not reactive. Exercise good, sound judgment in doing all of the above.

Patience is acknowledging that the sum total of the information needed to move forward may have not yet come forward in order to keep us from moving backward.

Be proactive, not reactive—don't let someone else define your day in an email or phone call.

If you want to be an action person be proactive rather than reactive...

The change shall not always be stressful and reactive; make it as fun and proactive as possible.

Too often entrepreneurs are reactive to the challenges inherent when building a company... the most successful founders are proactive.

It takes awareness to be proactive instead of reactive, to try something different instead of going back to the same old dysfunctional routine.

الإنسان ليس مجرد كائن استجابي كما هو حال الحيوانات، يقتصر سلوكه على ردود الفعل للمثيرات الخارجية أو الداخلية، ويحاول التعامل معها. إنما هو كائن مبادر محرّض (Proactive) وليس كائناَ استجابياً (Reactive) ص 95

The end of the professional era is characterized by four trends: the move from bespoke service; the bypassing of traditional gatekeepers; a shift from a reactive to a proactive approach to professional work; and the more-for-less challenge.

Establishing a pattern of reactive consequences can have disastrous effects on classroom efficiency and morale. Rather, a proactive strategy helps to give students an opportunity to demonstrate a positive contribution to the classroom community.

Through our constant connectivity to each other, we have become increasingly reactive to what comes to us rather than being proactive about what matters most to us. Being informed and connected becomes a disadvantage when the deluge supplants your space to think and act.

Successful people do work hard, but they also think before they act. They are proactive, not just reactive. Most people mentally have a sign on their desk that reads, “Don’t just sit there—do something!” The best advice I ever received was to revise the sign to read, “Don’t just do something—sit there!

In making such a choice, we become reactive. Reactive people are often affected by their physical environment. If the weather is good, they feel good. If it isn’t, it affects their attitude and their performance. Proactive people can carry their own weather with them. Whether it rains or shines makes no difference

The ability to subordinate an impulse to a value is the essence of the proactive person. Reactive people are driven by feelings, by circumstances, by conditions, by their environment. Proactive people are driven by values—carefully thought about, selected and internalized values. Proactive people are still influenced by external stimuli,

Be proactive. “I’m a little bit Canadian pacifist and reactive,” Zilis says. “My gameplay was a hundred percent reactive to what everyone else was doing, as opposed to thinking through my best strategy.” She realized that, like many women, this mirrored the way she behaved at work. Both Musk and Mark Juncosa told her that she could never win unless she took charge of setting the strategy.

It takes a concerted effort to be mindful with social media—to be proactive instead of reactive. When we’re mindful, we’re aware of why we’re logging on, and we’re able to fully disconnect when we’ve followed through with our intention. We’re able to engage authentically and meaningfully, but we’re not dependent on that connection in a way that limits our effectiveness and our sense of presence.

person. Reactive people are driven by feelings, by circumstances, by conditions, by their environment. Proactive people are driven by values—carefully thought about, selected and internalized values. Proactive people are still influenced by external stimuli, whether physical, social, or psychological. But their response to the stimuli, conscious or unconscious, is a value-based choice or response.

Right action is not reactive, it is proactive. It is independent of others’ immediate demands on your time. Checking email, Facebook, and Twitter upon waking up sets you up for a day of reactivity. Starting the day with your own creative labor sets you up for a day of action. What’s the most important thing you could work on today? Why aren’t you putting that before everything else? It’s hard. But only until you begin.

The ability to subordinate an impulse to a value is the essence of the proactive person. Reactive people are driven by feelings, by circumstances, by conditions, by their environment. Proactive people are driven by values—carefully thought about, selected and internalized values. Proactive people are still influenced by external stimuli, whether physical, social, or psychological. But their response to the stimuli, conscious or unconscious,

The biggest problem we face today is “reactionary workflow.” We have started to live a life pecking away at the many inboxes around us, trying to stay afloat by responding and reacting to the latest thing: e-mails, text messages, tweets, and so on. Through our constant connectivity to each other, we have become increasingly reactive to what comes to us rather than being proactive about what matters most to us. Being informed and connected becomes a disadvantage when the deluge supplants your space to think and act.

At one seminar where I was speaking on the concept of proactivity, a man came up and said, “Stephen, I like what you’re saying. But every situation is so different. Look at my marriage. I’m really worried. My wife and I just don’t have the same feelings for each other we used to have. I guess I just don’t love her anymore and she doesn’t love me. What can I do?” “The feeling isn’t there anymore?” I asked. “That’s right,” he reaffirmed. “And we have three children we’re really concerned about. What do you suggest?” “Love her,” I replied. “I told you, the feeling just isn’t there anymore.” “Love her.” “You don’t understand. The feeling of love just isn’t there.” “Then love her. If the feeling isn’t there, that’s a good reason to love her.” “But how do you love when you don’t love?” “My friend, love is a verb. Love—the feeling—is a fruit of love, the verb. So love her. Serve her. Sacrifice. Listen to her. Empathize. Appreciate. Affirm her. Are you willing to do that?” *** In the great literature of all progressive societies, love is a verb. Reactive people make it a feeling.

Proactive people show you what they love, what they want, what they purpose, and what they stand for. These people are very different from those who are known by what they hate, what they don’t like, what they stand against, and what they will not do. While reactive victims are primarily known by their “against” stances, proactive people do not demand rights; they live them. Power is not something you demand or deserve; it is something you express. The ultimate expression of power is love; it is the ability not to express power, but to restrain it. Proactive people are able to “love others as themselves.” They have mutual respect. They are able to “die to self” and not “return evil for evil.” They have gotten past the reactive stance of the law and are able to love and not react.

Reactive people are driven by feelings, by circumstances, by conditions, by their environment. Proactive people are driven by values—carefully thought about, selected and internalized values.

Human beings are by nature reactive. If we were proactive animals, global warming, for one, would not be a contested topic today. A broader range of Americans would be taking steps to counteract the trend.

My friend, love is a verb. Love—the feeling—is a fruit of love, the verb. So love her. Serve her. Sacrifice. Listen to her. Empathize. Appreciate. Affirm her. Are you willing to do that?” *** In the great literature of all progressive societies, love is a verb. Reactive people make it a feeling. They’re driven by feelings. Hollywood has generally scripted us to believe that we are not responsible, that we are a product of our feelings. But the Hollywood script does not describe the reality. If our feelings control our actions, it is because we have abdicated our responsibility and empowered them to do so. Proactive people make love a verb. Love is something you do: the sacrifices you make, the giving of self, like a mother bringing a newborn into the world. If you want to study love, study those who sacrifice for others, even for people who offend or do not love in return. If you are a parent, look at the love you have for the children you sacrificed for. Love is a value that is actualized through loving actions. Proactive people subordinate feelings to values. Love, the feeling, can be recaptured.

Where security is concerned, we need to change the reactive approach the aviation industry has been known to have for the last 74 years since the birth of ICAO in 1944. We must stop rushing to close the barn door, after the horse already bolted. And become a proactive risk driven industry, only then will we stop being caught with our pants down.

To me the ICAO Annex 17 Standards and Recommended Practices-SARP's are the foundation to build on. They are at the very best very basic and states need to realize they are to build on them to make their National standards better, over and above the SARP's. Adopting the Annex 17 SARP's as National Civil Aviation Security Regulations-CASR's is simply lazy & myopic. There are various aspects on the ground, that the SARP's deal with rather passively if not reactively at most, and that need a proactive approach to them. A good example the trusted insider threat, nowhere is it covered within the SARP's but does that mean CAA's shouldn't address it yet it is a clear & present danger?

This strategy of policing by non-policing, which leads to a police force that’s reactive instead of proactive, is exactly what the RGI wants.

THE ERA OF REACTIONARY WORKFLOW The biggest problem we face today is “reactionary workflow.” We have started to live a life pecking away at the many inboxes around us, trying to stay afloat by responding and reacting to the latest thing: e-mails, text messages, tweets, and so on. Through our constant connectivity to each other, we have become increasingly reactive to what comes to us rather than being proactive about what matters most to us. Being informed and connected becomes a disadvantage when the deluge supplants your space to think and act. As

The management is screwing things up. Or it’s the “process” that gets in the way. It’s time to stop blaming our surroundings and start taking responsibility. While no workplace is perfect, it turns out that our gravest challenges are a lot more primal and personal. Our individual practices ultimately determine what we do and how well we do it. Specifically, it’s our routine (or lack thereof), our capacity to work proactively rather than reactively, and our ability to systematically optimize our work habits over time that determine our ability to make ideas happen. DON

Time management is reactive, whereas time strategy is proactive.

The criticism I get is that being polite, cooperative, and enthusiastic somehow puts you at a disadvantage when it comes to negotiations. As if being nice means that you leave all critical thinking at the door. I find this opinion is usually just influenced by outdated popular opinion, because all of the imperial evidence suggests otherwise. You can be nice but firm. Favoring a problem-solving partnership around a shared goal does not equate to automatic compromise or being taken advantage of. Harvard published an article by Calum Coburn titled “Negotiation Conflict Styles”68 that outlines five negotiation styles and when to use each. The article draws from the Lewicki and Hiam’s Negotiation Matrix, which paints a portrait of different negotiating styles along axis representing varying degrees of cooperation and assertiveness (ranked from reactive to proactive). Figure 8.1: The Lewicki and Hiam Negotiation Matrix69

in our reactions, we are not simple passengers. Over time, with training and practice, we can change our responses. We can shift from being reactive individuals to being proactive teammates who, in cooperation with our partner, intentionally shape the transaction between us.

being more proactive in preventing problems, not just less reactive

Secure Man VS Vulnerable Man A secure man is someone who can identify their own weaknesses and improve. He can accept his flaws and maintain his self esteem. He knows his journey is never over, so he always strives for more. He lends strength to others needing a helping hand. He prefers to take the hard right over the easy wrong. He can handle constructive criticism without bitterness. He can provide for himself and his family. He can set goals for himself knowing one day he can achieve them. He is a multitasker. He doesn't make decisions just for the moment; He makes decisions that he knows will benefit and effect his whole life. If this man makes a mistake he will hold himself responsible and correct his mistake. He has confidence in himself and holds no one else accountable for his happiness and/or peace of mind. A sincere understanding of empathy for others, a sense of humility, and humbleness are reinforcing characteristics of this man. A secure man has faith in the Lord. A vulnerable man is someone who depends on others. He can not accomplish routine tasks or deliver on his own. He is always asking for a helping hand and has little or no self esteem. He lives for the moment without a life plan. He doesn't set lifetime goals. A vulnerable man is either too arrogant and ignorant to notice when somebody is trying to help him, so he rebels against those closest to him. A vulnerable man gets angry when things doesn't go his way. He doesn't only complain, he also complains about what others aren't doing for him. He can't provide for himself or others. You can never go to him for advice or will he extend a hand of help to others without wanting something in return. A vulnerable man can not make a decision and lives a reactive life instead of a proactive one. He knows right from wrong...but still decides to go the wrong way because it's the easiest. A vulnerable man seeks an enabler one who will bail them out time and time again. Others notices his individual weaknesses...However he chooses a life of denial and deflection. This man believes it is always someone else's fault and feels entitled to others hard work and efforts. A vulnerable man has no faith in a higher power and thinks he'll never have to answer for the choices made in their life.-27 September 2012-

When you're dealing with a person who is coming from a paradigm of Win/Lose, the relationship is still the key. The place to focus is on your Circle of Influence. You make deposits into the Emotional Bank Account through genuine courtesy, respect, and appreciation for that person and for the other point of view. You stay longer in the communication process. You listen more, you listen in greater depth. You express yourself with greater courage. You aren't reactive. You go deeper inside yourself for strength of character to be proactive. You keep hammering it out until the other person begins to realize that you genuinely want the resolution to be a real win for both of you.

Resilience versus Robustness. Typically when we want to improve a system’s ability to avoid outages, handle failures gracefully when they occur and recover quickly when they happen, we often talk about resilience. (…) Robustness is the ability of a system that is able to react to expected variations, Resilience is having an organisation capable of adapting to things that have not been thought of, which could very well include creating a culture of experimentation through things like chaos engineering. For example, we are aware a specific machine could die, so we might bring redundancy into our system by load-balancing an instance, that is an example of addressing Robustness. Resiliency is the process of an organisation preparing itself to the fact that it cannot anticipate all potential problems. An important consideration here is that microservices do not necessarily give you robustness for free, rather they open up opportunities to design a system in such a way that it can better tolerate network partitions, service outages, and the like. Just spreading your functionality over multiple separate processed and separate machines does not guarantee improved robustness, quite the contrary, it may just increase your surface area of failure.

Aside from evidence for proactive violence among contemporary hunter-gatherers, two thorny facts don’t entirely square with the view that we stopped fighting ever since we became hunter-gatherers. The first fact is muscle. The average adult man today is 12 to 15 percent heavier than the average adult woman, but women have much higher percentages of body fat masking underlying differences in muscle mass. Whole-body scans show that males average 61 percent more muscle mass then females, with most of that difference in the upper body.30 Men’s extra brawn, moreover, is added during puberty, when testosterone levels shoot up, accelerating muscle growth in the arms, shoulders, and neck.31 In this regard, human men resemble male kangaroos, whose upper bodies also enlarge during adolescence to help them fight.32 Enhanced upper-body muscularity in male humans might also have been selected for hunting, but we cannot rule out aggression. The second fact is literally staring us in the face. Consider the faces of assorted males in the genus Homo lined up for you in figure 16. Note that until about 100,000 years ago, even in some of the earliest Homo sapiens, males tend to have massive, heavily built faces and menacingly large browridges. The earliest H. sapiens males have smaller, less robust faces than Neanderthals and other non-modern humans, but truly lightly built, “feminized” faces don’t appear until less than 100,000 years ago.33 It is intriguing to hypothesize that these big faces reflect higher levels of testosterone during adolescence. In males today, elevated testosterone contributes to not only higher libidos, more impulsivity, and more reactive aggression but also bigger browridges and larger faces.34 Another molecule that possibly affects facial masculinization is the neurotransmitter serotonin, which reduces aggression; less masculinized faces are associated with higher levels of serotonin.35

I have little fear walking up to a pig on a farm or my neighbor’s dog, but I wouldn’t dream of approaching a wild boar or a wolf in the same way. Over generations of breeding, farmers have reduced the aggressiveness of these and other animals by selecting for lower levels of testosterone and higher levels of serotonin.36 Correspondingly, many domesticated species have smaller faces. Intriguingly, some wild species also evolved reduced aggression, less territoriality, and more tolerance on their own through another kind of selection known as self-domestication. The best example are bonobos. Bonobos are the rarer, less well-known cousins of chimpanzees that live only in remote forests south of the Congo River in Africa. But unlike male chimpanzees and gorillas, male bonobos rarely engage in regular, ruthless, reactive violence. Whereas male chimpanzees frequently and fiercely attack each other to achieve dominance and regularly beat up females, male bonobos seldom fight.37 Bonobos also engage in much less proactive violence. Experts hypothesize that bonobos self-domesticated because females were able to form alliances that selected for cooperative, unaggressive males with lower levels of androgens and higher levels of serotonin.38 Tellingly, like humans, bonobos also have smaller browridges and smaller faces than chimpanzees.39 Many scientists are testing the idea that humans also self-domesticated.40 If so, I’d speculate this process involved two stages. The first reduction occurred early in the genus Homo through selection for increased cooperation with the origins of hunting and gathering. The second reduction might have occurred within our own species, Homo sapiens, as females selected for less reactively aggressive males.

As with war, suppressing reactive aggression and following rules are fundamental to most sports. Indeed, sports might have evolved as a way to teach impulse control along with skills useful for hunting and controlled proactive fighting. What is more unsportsmanlike than punching an opponent who scores a goal or, even worse, punching a teammate who scores instead of you? Professional tennis players aren’t even allowed to say rude things on court. Surely other hominins including Neanderthals engaged in play, but I hypothesize that sports evolved when humans became self-domesticated. As noted above, it is primarily among domesticated species that adults play, and among the many reasons humans in every culture play sports, one is to teach cooperation and learn to restrain reactive aggression. Regardless of whether you are trying to beat your opponent to a pulp in a cage or impress the judges of a synchronized swimming competition, to be a “good sport” you have to play by the rules, control your temper, and get along with others. Sports also foster habits like discipline and courage that are crucial for proactive aggression such as warfare. Perhaps the Battle of Waterloo really was won on the playing fields of Eton.

When hospitals and reconceived drugstores like CVS and Walgreens become more like wellness centers than treatment centers, we stop becoming a reactive culture when it comes to medicine and become more proactive—taking our health and wellness seriously before problems start. This shift in thinking and in practice is a necessary part of the development of the reboot, as it will create a partnership between the individual and the medical community to fully and holistically think about health and longevity.

It is far more effective to arrange classroom furniture and move about the room while teaching in ways that ensures proximity to all students at various points in the lesson. This movement will proactively decrease acting-out behavior, rather than putting teachers in the position of reactively responding to inappropriate behavior. Marzano states that “desk arrangements should provide access to any student within four steps from where the teacher spends most of his time” (2007, p. 121). Students’ social-emotional development can be improved by proactively setting up the room for student academic and behavioral success. As we saw in the cycles of deficit mindset and growth mindset in Chapter 1, the fewer instances when we need to address misbehavior, the more we can affirm appropriate behavior, and the more likely we are to reverse the cycle of deficit mindset. Room arrangement and teacher proximity is an important first step in creating a positive learning environment.

Nowhere is our reactive instead of proactive model or care more apparent than in the stupefying fact that you currently need to be diagnosed with a mental health disorder to receive insurance reimbursement for mental health counseling. That's like needing to have the flu before you're allowed to wash your hands.

Because we are, by nature, proactive, if our lives are a function of conditioning and conditions, it is because we have, by conscious decision or by default, chosen to empower those things to control us. In making such a choice, we become reactive. Reactive people are often affected by their physical environment.

When teams were relatively reactive, waiting for direction from above, extraverts drove the best results. They asserted their visions and motivated teams to follow their lead. But when teams were proactive, bringing many ideas and suggestions to the table, it was introverts who led them to achieve greater things. The more reserved leaders came across as more receptive to input from below, which gave them access to better ideas and left their teams more motivated. With a team of sponges, the best leader is not the person who talks the most, but the one who listens best.

Taking a proactive approach to living healthy today will prevent the need to be reactive tomorrow.

Then love her. If the feeling isn’t there, that’s a good reason to love her.” “But how do you love when you don’t love?” “My friend, love is a verb. Love—the feeling—is a fruit of love, the verb. So love her. Serve her. Sacrifice. Listen to her. Empathize. Appreciate. Affirm her. Are you willing to do that?” *** In the great literature of all progressive societies, love is a verb. Reactive people make it a feeling. They’re driven by feelings. Hollywood has generally scripted us to believe that we are not responsible, that we are a product of our feelings. But the Hollywood script does not describe the reality. If our feelings control our actions, it is because we have abdicated our responsibility and empowered them to do so. Proactive people make love a verb. Love is something you do: the sacrifices you make, the giving of self, like a mother bringing a newborn into the world. If you want to study love, study those who sacrifice for others, even for people who offend or do not love in return. If you are a parent, look at the love you have for the children you sacrificed for. Love is a value that is actualized through loving actions. Proactive people subordinate feelings to values. Love, the feeling, can be recaptured. CIRCLE OF CONCERN/CIRCLE OF INFLUENCE Another excellent way to become more self-aware regarding our own degree of proactivity is to look at where we focus our time and energy.

As we look at those things within our Circle of Concern, it becomes apparent that there are some things over which we have no real control and others that we can do something about. We could identify those concerns in the latter group by circumscribing them within a smaller Circle of Influence. By determining which of these two circles is the focus of most of our time and energy, we can discover much about the degree of our proactivity. Proactive people focus their efforts in the Circle of Influence. They work on the things they can do something about. The nature of their energy is positive, enlarging and magnifying, causing their Circle of Influence to increase. Reactive people, on the other hand, focus their efforts in the Circle of Concern. They focus on the weakness of other people, the problems in the environment, and circumstances over which they have no control. Their focus results in blaming and accusing attitudes, reactive language, and increased feelings of victimization. The negative energy generated by that focus, combined with neglect in areas they could do something about, causes their Circle of Influence to shrink.

Our individual practices ultimately determine what we do and how well we do it. Specifically, it’s our routine (or lack thereof), our capacity to work proactively rather than reactively, and our ability to systematically optimize our work habits over time that determine our ability to make ideas happen.

While reactive victims are primarily known by their “against” stances, proactive people do not demand rights, they live them. Power is not something you demand or deserve, it is something you express. The ultimate expression of power is love; it is the ability not to express power, but to restrain it. Proactive

APPLICATION SUGGESTIONS For a full day, listen to your language and to the language of the people around you. How often do you use and hear reactive phrases such as “If only,” “I can’t,” or “I have to”? Identify an experience you might encounter in the near future where, based on past experience, you would probably behave reactively. Review the situation in the context of your Circle of Influence. How could you respond proactively? Take several moments and create the experience vividly in your mind, picturing yourself responding in a proactive manner. Remind yourself of the gap between stimulus and response. Make a commitment to yourself to exercise your freedom to choose. Select a problem from your work or personal life that is frustrating to you. Determine whether it is a direct, indirect, or no control problem. Identify the first step you can take in your Circle of Influence to solve it and then take that step. Try the thirty-day test of proactivity. Be aware of the change in your Circle of Influence.

Enterprise Thinking also accelerates the rate of personal and organizational achievement, allowing you to make proactive decisions rather than reactive ones in our increasingly fast-paced world.

Imagine if you will two circles, one a larger outer circle we call the circle of concern, and the second a smaller inner circle we call the circle of influence. The circle of influence basically means those things you can do something about. You can have influence upon them or control over them, such as your work, your health, your attitude. The circle of concern, the outer circle, represents things you can do nothing about, such as the economy, other people’s behavior, even the weather. Where does the proactive person focus? On the inner circle. And what do you think happens to this inner circle? It gets larger and larger. And you’re more and more able to influence. And where do you think the reactive person focuses?

God, unlike His creation, is always proactive and never reactive.

In the United States, meaningful financial reform has tended to be crisis-driven. That is an unfortunate fact, for several reasons. It means that our regulatory system has been defined and redefined under extreme rather than normal conditions. It means that financial regulation is more reactive than proactive. And it means that we must endure serious dysfunction, if not a major calamity, before fixing problems—financial excesses that typically have been recognized and acknowledged long before the crisis hits.

Here’s the reality of our current technique: Other people’s requests dictate the decisions we make. We become slaves to others’ demands when we let our time become dictated by requests. We will live reactive lives instead of proactive.

We will live reactive lives instead of proactive.

there is dire shortage of those who can create new opportunities through their own proactive sales effort. Many veteran salespeople are victims of their own past success and easier times, when they could make their numbers while operating in a reactive mode. Others were carried along by their company’s momentum and favorable economic conditions that created strong demand for their products or services. They never had to go out and find business.

While reactive boundaries signal something that needs to be dealt with, proactive boundaries fix something that is broken.

IT needs to be running in a proactive digital mode, rather than in a reactive industrial mode.

Many of us are reactive, not proactive. We react. We hit back. We are ‘an eye for an eye’ practitioners. We attack when we are attacked, with good measure. Our barometer reads from the environment and makes us act accordingly. We are mirrors who reflect the anger in others, the bad attitude in the other person, the negative comments of others. Let me show you a higher level of living.

Being reactive leaves you one step behind. Being proactive keeps you in front.

Relevant to planning and scheduling, available and reliable plant capacity is a y, encountering less reactive work is a y, completing more proactive work is a y, and even increasing labor productivity is a y. Plants have to be careful about overly focusing on KPIs for them. But plants can make themselves do planning and scheduling because they are x’s, and plants can also make themselves generate (not complete) more proactive work, which is another x. This chapter makes extensive use of the concept of y = f(x) to explain the KPIs for best planning and scheduling performance.

Nowhere is our reactive instead of proactive model of care more apparent than in the stupefying fact that you currently need to be diagnosed with a mental health disorder to receive insurance reimbursement for mental health counseling.

Proactive people make choices based on values. They think before they act. They recognize they cannot control everything that happens to them, but they can control what they do about it.

But Ballard knew that it could also be that this was the new LAPD—officers stripped of the mandate of proactive enforcement and waiting to be reactive, to hit the streets only when it was requested and required, and only then doing the minimum so as not to engender a complaint or controversy. To Ballard, much of the department had fallen into the pose of a citizen caught in the middle of a bank robbery.

The ability to subordinate an impulse to a value is the essence of the proactive person. Reactive people are driven by feelings, by circumstances, by conditions, by their environment. Proactive people are driven by values—carefully thought about, selected, and internalized values.

REACTIVE LANGUAGE PROACTIVE LANGUAGE There’s nothing I can do. Let’s look at our alternatives. That’s just the way I am. I can choose a different approach. He makes me so mad. I control my own feelings. They won’t allow that. I can create an effective presentation.

In making such a choice, we become reactive. Reactive people are often affected by their physical environment. If the weather is good, they feel good. If it isn’t, it affects their attitude and their performance. Proactive people can carry their own weather with them. Whether it rains or shines makes no difference to them. They are value driven; and if their value is to produce good quality work, it isn’t a function of whether the weather is conducive to it or not.

Take a deep breath and focus on your purpose—your Yes—in this situation. Ask yourself what you really want and what is really important here. In other words, shift from being reactive and focused on No, to being proactive and focused on Yes.

Waiting, waiting, waiting for things to suddenly turn our way is futile. We mustn’t waste our lives (or diminish our sense of self-respect and industry) waiting for someone else to feed us our dinner.

Are you playing offense in your marriage? Or are you playing a prevent defense that leaves romance on the sidelines? Are you parenting reactively or proactively? Do you have a spiritual growth plan? Are you working for a paycheck or stewarding your God-given gifts pursuing a God-ordained dream? Are you trying to break even spiritually by avoiding sin? Or are you going for broke by invading the darkness with the light and love of Jesus Christ?

According to Wrangham, humans differ from other animals, especially our ape cousins, in having exceedingly low levels of reactive aggression but much higher levels of proactive aggression. We correspond to Rousseau in terms of reactive aggression and to Hobbes in terms of proactive aggression.

The ability to subordinate an impulse to a value is the essence of the proactive person. Reactive people are driven by feelings, by circumstances, by conditions, by their environment. Proactive people are driven by values—carefully thought about, selected and internalized values. Proactive people are still influenced by external stimuli, whether physical, social, or psychological. But their response to the stimuli, conscious or unconscious, is a value-based choice or response.

Rather than becoming offended, angry, or helpless, a proactive person explores the growth that comes from trials and conflict.

Being forgiving is one of the most noble virtues of a proactive person.