Habit 1: Be Proactive
Chapter summary from The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey.
The most basic split Covey draws is between proactive people, who recognize they have the freedom to choose their response to any stimulus, and reactive people, who treat their behavior as caused by what's been done to them. The space between stimulus and response is the space where freedom lives, and proactivity is the daily practice of using it.
This is the easiest habit to misread as positive thinking. It's not. It's the recognition that your circle of concern — the things you care about — is larger than your circle of influence — the things you can do anything about — and that proactive people focus their energy on the circle of influence, which expands as a result. Reactive people focus on the circle of concern, which doesn't expand and which generates frustration.
Concretely: stop the language of I-have-to, they-made-me, I-can't. Replace with I-choose-to, I'm-going-to, I-will. The language matters because the language shapes the available actions.
Someone who says I-had-no-choice stops looking for choices; someone who says I-chose-this can choose differently next time.
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