Be proactive!

One of the big lessons that I had to learn in the worst way, and I am still learning, is to be proactive. Before that happened, I spent so much of my life waiting for others to do things for me, or waiting for the right conditions to come before starting something new, or leaving my responsibilities to others, making excuses to justify my failures. Also I used to be moved by others attitude and way of thinking which limited my life, career and relations with others. Being proactive means that you take control of yourself and your life and the situations that surround you, basically you anticipate or choose the responses that you want from any event that occurs in your life. You are responsible for your own life.

Being proactive requires that you take your own decisions, that you stop asking others about what to do and how to do it, you start to decide what you want and how you are going to get it; choose, make mistakes and learn, that’s how we learn and evolve to become better persons. In order to be proactive you need to stop being reactive, the other side of being proactive.

Reactive people usually wait for things to happen and then react to those things, adjusting themselves to the situation. Reactive people are always seemed to be affected by their environment and the circumstances around them. For example, if you are the kind of person that gets sad on a rainy day, just because is rainy, you maybe a reactive person, which is leaving the control of your feelings and your mental states to external factors, in this case a rainy day. Another example of being reactive is how much you get affected from other people; for example, if your boss tells you that you are mediocre and after that you get sad, frustrated, etc, you are being reactive to your boss attitude, you are being moved by your feelings; in the other hand  when you are proactive, your mental state does not change after an external stimulus like the one I just mentioned, if you know who you are and how you do things, you should not get affected by others thoughts, you are being proactive. Being proactive mean also to take the initiative in your life, you are responsible for everything that happens and accordingly you have to act to get what you want from life.

We all have the power to choose how we are going to response to any stimulus. If you understand how to be proactive, how you can choose your answers to any external stimulus, then you will be half way near to fulfill your dreams. Being proactive is to understand that you can choose which attitude you are going to assume in any circumstance. Think that you can choose how you feel about anything, for example, you can choose to feel happy after the person you loved leave you or when you have being alone for a long time, don’t expect that good things happen to start feeling good, take control of what you feel, don’t let any external stimulus affect your mental state, keep it positive, if you know what you want from life and you are pursuing it, those external factors should not affect your way!

Make your force reside in your values, do not let your feelings take control over yourself; the less you are affected by others and by any external circumstances, the more control over your life you will have. In your way to make your dreams come true, you have to be proactive!