It is easy to voice than being proactive

Back in childhood, you must have heard this from your parents “you need to be active/proactive, “and in school, teachers often motivate us by saying “be active and smart so you can shine.” Even in professional life, this word is commonly used if anyone makes a mistake, we often hear from our boss, “you need to be proactive.” So we can agree that almost every one of us is familiar with this phrase. But do you think you really become proactive when someone asks you to be? Do you get some extra powers while you hear this? I am sure you will all agree on this point no one is going to be proactive by just listening to this common phrase “proactive.”

Reactive

Now the question is what is really being proactive means and how to become one. To understand pro-activeness, let’s start with understanding what is not being proactive, which is being reactive.

“As per definition, to be reactive is to be ready to react or respond to something else — as opposed to ready to act on one’s own. Areactive person does things only in response to others.”

Let’s suppose you are writing a program for a software company; you wrote and mark it done. The client complains to you about a bug in it. You react to it and fix it and share it back with the client. The client again responds to you with the bug. You were again being reactive to the response query and fix the bug. You see how this can escalate quickly, and you can lose your job for just being reactive.

let's take another example, If someone pinches you, we will quickly respond that is the reaction. As being a reactive person, you are always ready to react to certain events; you are rather lifeless unless something or someone else causes you to do act. This is usually considered a bad trait in professional life.

Reactive people witness the happenings and respond accordingly. They might survive the situation, but they have to react quickly and with little preparation.

Proactive

So being proactive is not a mysterious quality that we have or don’t have. It is a way of dealing with things that we can develop and strengthen.

What, then, is this skill?

You can easily understand the proactive meaning it is the same as being reactive explained earlier; the only difference is you respond ahead of time. You actually go into the future to see what events are going to happen and decide the reaction in present ahead of time. See, I told you that it is easy just like going into the future😊

Wise people used to say that “three types of people exist:

1. Those who make things happen or create possibilities
2. Those who see what happens
3. And those who wonder what happened

The first type of people is proactive ones, those who become the reason for happenings!! Anyone who foresees the possibilities and gets himself prepared for the situation. It is human power and definitely in our own hands to be either type from the above three.

Therefore, you can say proactive behavior is analyzing the problem that could come in the future and making early preparations to cope with it. In business, a proactive strategy is to analyze the business environment, be aware of trends, and adapt to them before competent marketers do. It is pretty tricky than reactive, but it works and keeps you stand out from the crowd.

Understanding a proactive behavior:

Here are some examples to better understand this human behavior:

• Let’s suppose a student studies in his summer vacations, when he has free time, for his semester ahead, which he considers difficult. This is his proactive behavior as he can see that he may face difficulties in the future, and he gets prepared for them ahead of time.
• Similarly, a machine operator cleans up the machine before use as an initiative to limit water wastage. This is his proactive act as he foresees water wastage in the future and works on it before the problem arises.
• A businessman keeps himself in close touch with the changing trends of the market and the likings and dislikes of his customers. Accordingly, he accesses the future change in trends and gets himself ready for the change and to compete with his rivals.

Proactivity is different from other types of work performances.

Human nature is loaded with various behaviors; everyone exhibits different behavior, and we often confuse behavior with another. Proactive behavior is repeatedly confused with other common behaviors related to work, like proficiency, i.e., the ability to achieve expected requirements for one’s work, or adaptability, i.e., the ability to face and support changes initiated by competitors successfully. In this regard, adaptability is responding to change, and proactivity is commencing change.

The key features of proactive behavior:

Conclusion

The first thing you need to change in yourself for practicing proactiveness is to stop complaining and start accepting and taking control of your own life. Stephen Covey states in his book 7 habits of highly effective people.

I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions.

This explains it perfectly you can not always respond to the events happening around you. You can not just wait and see things happening around you. You need to step up participate, change the direction and make decisions. Sometimes you will fail and sometimes succeed.

Proactive people are achievers and they have the right mindset You can be one of those people, too: it’s not a magical superpower only the chosen ones get. It can be learned and trained like you would train a muscle.