True Pro-activeness – By Thought, Not Feeling

“All too often, proactiveness is reactiveness in disguise. If we simply become more aggressive fighting the ‘enemy out there,’ we are reacting--regardless of what we call it. True proactiveness comes from seeing how we contribute to our own problems. It is a product of our way of thinking, not our emotional state” -Peter Senge.

How do we contribute to our own problems? Surely, if we agree with the Senge quote, the key to our success and overall happiness is derived from within ourselves and our own thinking. It patently has little or nothing to do with others at all.

We too easily become victims of our own circumstances. We get cheesed off at the slightest things that people do that we see, and we attract the negative--we even look for it! We’re not happy unless we’re unhappy it seems.

True pro-activeness is quite the other way. It’s more simple, and much more basic. Why would we want to fight the way the world is, and the way of ‘folk,’ and not simply just accept it and them for the way they presently are, using that context as the platform of influence. Ah, pro-activity, finally! We’re beginning to think pro-actively. (And it feels good!)

We all know (I think?) that joy is an ‘inside job,’ don’t we? And we know (presumably) that influence propagates most in charmed, graceful circumstances--unimpeded joy is the catalyst.
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Joy frees us to think without the baggage of feelings weighing us down. It’s the wind beneath our wings in a world that’s ordinarily too horrible to contemplate. It helps us mould chaos into order, at least in our own thinking processes. Joy gives us room to move so we can consider objectively what is before us.

Joy also helps us honestly consider how we contribute to our own problems. It lessens the focus on others whilst helping us not feel like failures, even if we do decide that we are contributing to our own problems. Joy helps us laugh at ourselves--hence, we learn... I think the buzzword is ‘the AHA moment,’ and this is how we feel; invigorated, buoyed.

How often have we, in fact, gotten in the way of our own progress? How many times do we become our own worst enemy?

The good news is the barrier is easy to remove. Let us stop thinking (reacting) on emotion and start getting back to logic and how we can actually help (and not hinder) ourselves.

Copyright © 2009, S. J. Wickham. All Rights Reserved.