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posted on:
7/27/2012 4:06:04 AM EST
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Get Ready To Create Positive Change in Your Life – Part Five
think positive, create positive change, change your life, positive thinking,
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In this final article into getting ready to create positive change in your life we take a look at an example to illustrate the difference between reactive and proactive behavior.
Example:
Your boss gives you what you consider to be harsh criticism of your latest report. Your adrenaline rushes and a wave of angry indignation rolls over you. In this heightened emotional state, you actually stop listening to what he is saying because you are already thinking about defending yourself. Your response to him is reactive - you go on the defensive and become somewhat irrational.
In this sort of situation, you cannot control what your boss has to say but you can control how you handle yourself. Therein lies the key to non-reactive behavior: when you make the positive change to stop being reactive you enable your ability to handle situations in ways that prove productive versus destructive.
The proactive behavior would be: listen to everything your boss has to say, stop and think. Pause. Get your heart rate back to the normal range. Without taking the comments personally, decide if there was anything in what your boss had to say that had merit? Is there some sort of deep learning to be had, either from him or you? Could the perceived harshness perhaps have been made worse by your defensiveness?
Life always throws the unexpected our way, much of it unpleasant and challenging - that is how life is! But, when you make a positive change to become really aware and in tune with what is happening, you can learn not to add additional meaning to reality where there is no additional meaning needed. For example, in the above incident, your immediate reaction was to assume your boss thought you were in the wrong and therefore not up to snuff. But that was just your initial reaction, and after that you stopped listening!
When you behave reactively, without thinking, what you thought someone meant and what they actually said are often two very different entities. Perhaps, if you had only stopped and listened, all the boss meant was that your work could have been better and he wanted to point out where you went wrong – (isn’t that part of his job?)
So where does this reactive behavior come from? Often, adding meaning where there is none goes back to a person’s childhood. Maybe their Father was always highly critical. This could easily lead a child to believe that they were a loser and wouldn’t amount to anything. That is the typical type of meaning a child creates in response to an unpleasant situation.
What really happened is that this child had a highly critical father. Period. The unfortunate thing is that this type of reaction to criticism will often become habit and be carried into adulthood. As a result, any time criticism appears to be heading their way, such a person will respond with the inbuilt childhood reaction: I am a loser.
Developing the ability to control reactive behavior and see things for just what they are can is one positive change that will make a whole world of difference to your life.
Finally, a word about perspective or attitude. How we view the world or any given situation will dictate our effectiveness and our state of mind. Create a positive change to your attitude and you not only change the way you see things, you actually find you will change your reality.
We will cover the benefits of having a positive attitude in much greater depth another time, but understand this - When you view your work/life as being tough, that pessimistic perspective will trickle down into everything you do. Make a positive change to a new optimistic perspective, one that will work in accordance with your goals and desires, and you will be amazed at what can happen.
In the five articles in this series we have been laying the foundation for a mindset that allows us to make lasting changes that will create a more meaningful, productive and happy life. Once the preparation work is under way, the outer changes will begin to happen on their own. As the real you begins to emerge your authenticity will shine through and people will be drawn to this new you.
The new you will view everything that happens as an opportunity for growth and further learning. You will find the work you do and its subsequent benefits will spread into all areas of your life, not just the ones that you may have originally pinpointed. The vision you held will become your new reality.
Don’t you think that right now is the time to get ready to create positive change in your life?
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 | | I shared this with my Twitter followers as well. It's that useful. |
| | | | | I agree with you Peter. I find it very difficult to handle a conversation with a person who behave reactive in their responces. When I think about it, it happens quite often. There must have been a lot of highly critical fathers around. It would be nice to learn the best way of handling such a situation. |
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