As I have studied the 7 Habits from “Moving Forward with a Passion” this week, being proactive and putting first things first really resonated with me:
Proactive: As I thought about the topic of being proactive, I remembered a talk given by David A. Bednar. He talks about acting in situations rather than being acted upon. I feel this can be synonymous with being proactive because you actively choose what your response will be in any situation rather than reacting blindly. In “Moving Forward with a Passion,” Jim Ritchie tells us that we must become self-starters, . . . and decision makers. It’s hard to lead from behind--maybe impossible. If you’re a reactive person . . . and spend your time hiding and watching people who are proactive, then you need to stop and start doing what they do. Take charge, take the lead and move forward.
Stephen R. Covey explains that it is not what happens that is important. It is our response to whatever happens that makes all the difference. He goes on to explain that being proactive doesn’t mean being pushy, aggressive or insensitive. Rather, proactivity means to control a situation from the inside out. Or in other words, to affect positive change, stop focusing on the immediate circumstances and instead consider your response to the conditions that exist. Do that and you have removed the power of anything external to affect you. I greatly appreciated this definition because sometimes I worry that when I am proactive, people will think I am being pushy. When my third son had leukemia at age 4, I found myself quickly thrown into the arena of being more proactive than I had been in my life. There were many times when I had to talk with the doctors and help them make a plan for his health and I was afraid I was coming across as an aggressive parent. However, being proactive proved beneficial for my as well as my son and the rest of our family because we had a plan and weren’t waiting to be told what was going to happen.
In being proactive, we are blessed to be able to make our own choices about how we are going to act. When my children were young, I often told them they were always free to make their own choices but they weren’t free to choose the consequences. Depending on what was chosen, the consequences were either welcomed or unwelcomed but they came depending on the choice because they were automatically tied to the choice.
I have experienced being proactive and reactive during times in my life and definitely enjoy the proactive times the most. These are the times that I feel the most peace and comfort because I have a plan and know how I am going to act/handle situations that come my way. Even when we don’t know how something is going to happen, we can already have in our minds how we are going to handle it.
First Things First: I appreciated Covey’s outline of four basic types of activities –
1) Important and Urgent
2) Important and Non-Urgent
3) Urgent but Not Important
4) Not Urgent and Not Important
It is often a challenge for me to manage my time effectively because I classify everything as a #1 (important and urgent). I loved Covey’s advice that the heart of effective personal time management is to spend the maximum time possible doing important jobs in a non-urgent atmosphere that increases your efficiency. Wow! That really struck me and has helped me to look at my life even just this week and reprioritize things. Not everything is a #1 and as I have done this I have felt less stress and have been able to accomplish more than when I was viewing everything as needing to be done all at once.
Even though I have studied the 7 Habits of Highly Successful People in the past, this week was definitely an eye opener to me. I hope that I will remember to sit down and truly prioritize what is important in my life each week. Too many times I try to fit everything in that I have written on my huge list and just end up feeling overwhelmed and exhausted without spending time on those things that matter the most. I appreciated Richey's remarks that if we can't trust ourselves privately to be prepared and in control, how can we face the real world with confidence. As I work on both habits of being proactive and putting first things first, I will be able to be successful for myself as well as being able to help others.
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