Reactive vs. Proactive: Tips for Being Proactive

When someone takes a reactive approach to life, they wait for events to occur and then respond to them. For example, a reactive business owner might act as if they will constantly be in a booming market and then be unprepared when an economic downturn arrives.

To be proactive means to plan for and adapt to all aspects of life—positive and negative—no matter how or when they occur. Consider an entrepreneur who just recently founded a startup. Rather than merely react to the whims of the market, they could proactively take steps to set up a rainy day fund should they experience a loss of revenue.

Reactive leaders and reactive people are constantly involved in a game of catch-up with life. Rather than planning for the ups and downs of everyday existence, they simply react to them with varying degrees of success or failure. Proactivity is a balance between planning for what you can control and accepting and adapting to what you can’t control.

Taking a proactive stance toward life enables you to reap plenty of positive benefits. Here are just three to consider for a start:

1. 1. Greater stability: Once you start being proactive, you’ll find a greater sense of stability and security in your own life. Reactive people respond to short-term inconveniences as they happen, whereas proactive people can wake up each day knowing they’ve done what they can to prepare for any eventuality.
2. 2. Less stress: A proactive approach to life leads to far less stress than is common for more reactive people. While you will still need to deploy your problem-solving skills from time to time, you can do so with the knowledge you’ve already prepared for them extensively. You’ll also be far more likely to accept and adapt to adverse circumstances than you would otherwise.
3. 3. More control: One of the key benefits of proactive vs. reactive management—whether for your business or your emotional state—is how much more control it gives you over previously uncontrollable things. A reactive strategy is innately incapable of controlling anything—all you do with this approach is respond to other people, events, and the like. When you’re proactive, you can take charge of more aspects of your life.

If you’ve approached life in a predominantly reactive way up until now, perhaps it’s time to try a different approach. Keep these tips in mind as you start to learn how to become more proactive:

• Accept responsibility. While you might not have control of every aspect of your life, you can still take thorough charge of the parts that you do. When it comes to completing important tasks, do as much as you can to get them done long before you have to worry about running out of time or hitting other road bumps. If you notice a consistent behavior pattern leading to negative results, do your best to change it.
• Plan when possible. No one can predict future events with total accuracy, but everyone can stave off potential problems by taking proactive measures. Proactive thinkers spend more time thinking about the big picture, while reactive thinkers respond to one-off events. In business, for instance, a proactive management style focuses on planning for all sorts of eventualities—this makes it easier to adapt whenever anything happens, either positive or negative.
• Practice mindfulness. When you meditate or take a more mindful approach to life, you learn how to identify reactive thinking patterns. By doing so, you also prepare yourself to replace them with more proactive thinking habits. Mindfulness allows you to accept life as it comes without feeling the need to make any knee-jerk reactions to adverse circumstances.
• Prepare for adaptation. No matter how sophisticated your predictive prowess or ironclad your preparation for negative events, something will eventually come along to knock you off balance. Maintaining a proactive attitude even then is essential. Proactivity has as much to do with reacting well when you must as it does with making the need for instantaneous reactions like that less likely to happen in the first place.

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