30 Day Proactivity Challenge

Proactivity: The 30-Day Test

Assignment:
Every day, you must write in your journal concerning your willingness to be proactive. Use the following questions to help you:

1. Did I make and keep small commitments? If so, what were they? If not, why not?
   
2. Was I actively seeking solutions rather than highlighting problems? Example.
   
3. Did is use proactive or reactive language today? How did I respond to someone I heard using reactive language? Did I encourage or insult or ignore?
4. Did I act on my commitment to be proactive today? Did I consider whether or not something frustrating was in my circle of influence? Example.
   
5. Did make a mistake today? Did I admit it, correct it and learn from it? Immediately? Example.
   
6. Did I accuse or blame someone or something for my situation? Example.
   
7. Was I compassionate toward the weaknesses in others? Example.
   
8. Did you remind yourself that you control all of your actions and reactions? Example.
   
9. How many times today did you say "I can't", "If only" or "I have to?" Fix that.
10. Is your circle of influence growing as you focus on your freedom of choice?

Excerpt from Steven Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

We don't have to go through the death camp experience of Frankl to recognize and develop our own proactivity. It is in the ordinary events of every day that we develop the proactive capacity to handle the extraordinary pressures of life. It's how we make and keep commitments, how we handle a traffic jam, how we respond to an irate customer or a disobedient child. It's how we view our problems and where we focus our energies. It's the language we use.

I would challenge you to test the principle of proactivity for 30 days. Simply try it and see what
happens. For 30 days work only in your Circle of Influence. Make small commitments and keep
them. Be a light, not a judge. Be a model, not a critic. Be part of the solution, not part of the
problem.

Try it in your marriage, in your family, in your job. Don't argue for other people's weaknesses.
Don't argue for your own. When you make a mistake, admit it, correct it, and learn from it --
immediately. Don't get into a blaming, accusing mode. Work on things you have control over.
Work on you. On be.

Look at the weaknesses of others with compassion, not accusation. It's not what they're not doing or should be doing that's the issue. The issue is your own chosen response to the situation and what you should be doing. If you start to think the problem is "out there," stop yourself. That thought is the problem.

People who exercise their embryonic freedom day after day will, little by little, expand that freedom. People who do not will find that it withers until they are literally "being lived." They are acting out the scripts written by parents, associates, and society.

We are responsible for our own effectiveness, for our own happiness, and ultimately, I would say,
for most of our circumstances.
Samuel Johnson observed: "The fountain of content must spring up in the mind, and he who hath so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition, will waste his life in fruitless efforts and multiply the grief he proposes to remove."

Knowing that we are responsible -- "response-able" -- is fundamental to effectiveness and to every other habit of effectiveness we will discuss.