Now think about the mood you are now in. Can you identify it? How are you feeling? What's your current state of mind?
Your ability to do what you just did is uniquely human. Animals do not possess this ability. "Self-awareness" or the ability to think about your very thought process, is the reason why Man rules the world and not apes. This is why we can evaluate and learn from others' experiences as well as our own. This is also why we can make or break our habits. If you are a fan of "Terminator" trilogy movies, you would have known that the machines took over the world the day they became 'self-aware'.
Self-awareness enablese us to stand apart and examine the way we "see" ourselves and this world we live in - our self-paradigm, is the most fundamental paradigm of effectiveness. It affects not only our attitudes and behaviours, but also how we see other people. Until we take how see ourselves and others, we will be unable to understand how others see amd feel about themselves and the way they see this world. Unaware, we will project out intentions on their behaviour and call ourselves " objective". This significantly restrict our potential and ability to relate to others.
There are 2 major paradigms: 1) Environment or Condition-based (REACTIVE) and 2) Reality or value-based (PROACTIVE).
1) We are who we're today is largely determined by what happened to us in our childhood and past experiences, inherited through genes and present environment (someone or something in your environment is responsible for your condition). The basic idea behind this REACTIVE theory is that we are conditioned to respond in a particular way to a certain stimulus.
STIMULUS ==> RESPONSE
2) We are who we are today is largely because of how we run our lives. It shifts the responsibility of the REACTIVE theory (of how our environment shapes us) to 'we are responsible' for our own lives'. Our behaviour is a direct result of the choices, decisions we made for ourselves. We have the initiative, responsiblity and power to make things happen, turn things around.
STIMULUS ==> FREEDOM TO CHOOSE ==> RESPONSE
(Self-Awareness, Imagination, Conscience, INdependent Will)Victor Fankl is a good example of a person possessing this proactive mentality. Frankl is a psychiatrist and a Jew being held capitve in the death camps of Nazi Germany, where he had seen and experienced things so repulsive and inhuman that we shudder to repeat them. One day, naked and alone in a small cell lock-up, he begin to become aware of the "last of human freedom" - freedom his Nazi tormentors couldn't take away from him. He could decide within himself how this was going to affect him. He has empower himself instead of allowing what has happened to him take control. In the midst of his experiences, Frankl help others find meaning in their suffering and dignity in their 'living-hellish' prison existence.
Between stimulus and response, man has the freedom to choose.
Highly proactive people recognize that responsibility. They do not blame circumstances, conditions or conditioning for their behaviour. Their behaviour is a product of their own conscious choice, based on values, rather than a product of their conditions which is based on feeling. Unlike reactive people, proactive people choose NOT to empower their environment to control them.
Difference bet. Reactive and Proactive People
Reactive people are often affected by their physical environment. If the weather is good, they feel good. If it isn't, it affects their attitude and performance. Proactive people carry their own weather with them. Whether it rains or shines makes no difference to them. They are value-driven and if their value is to produce good quality work, it isn't a function of whether the weather is conducive ot not.
Reactive people are also affected by their social environment, by the 'social weather'. When people treat them well, they feel well; when people don't, they become defensive and protective. Reactive people build their emotional lives around the behaviour of others, empowering the weaknesses of other people to control them.
Reactive people are driven by feelings, by circumstances, by environment and by what happened to them. Proactive people are driven by values and principles - meticulously thought and internalized values. Don't get me wrong, proactive people are still influenced by external stimuli - physical, social or psychological. But the difference is their RESPONSE to the stimuli
It is a value-based choice.
Eleanor Roosevelt said, "No one can hurt you without your consent."
In the words of Gandhi, "They cannot take away our self-respect if we do not give in to them."
It is our willing permission, or consent to what happens to us, that hurts us far more than what happens to us in the first place.
Until a person can say honestly and responsibly, "I am who I am today because of the choices I made yesterday," that person cannot say, "I choose otherwise." because each of us has a responsibilty to face the result of the decisions we made in the past, be it right or wrong.
