Proactive

People always see me preaching for values and approaches that have become almost extinct and ‘unusable’, if I can term it right, but one of them that people still can identify with more or less is ‘Being Proactive’! Although I have a chapter to impart about this, I will keep it concise for this post.

In simple words, Proactive Approach is to plan and align things in advance by foreseeing future risks, problems or challenges. Having said that, there are three kinds of people on earth...

Category 1 – 'Organizers' – Those who strategize things as they have the ability to foresee. They organize things in advance in order to avoid any possible set back.

Category 2 – ‘Reactors' – Those people who have the reactive methodology to handle things. That means whenever a situation arises they react accordingly. Although there can be good Reactors but the majority of them are bad Reactors since most of the situations do not give them the luxury of taking a U-Turn for going back to neutral to start again.

Category 3 – ‘Commoners’ – These people do not have control on their lives. They are the product of their circumstances. They automatically flow with the wind; no matter where the wind takes them to.

However the first category is the best one as it is great to have a proactive approach to life; it tends to become more idealistic than practical and sometimes gets on the verge of being ‘perfectionist’ to the extent of inviting hatred. Nevertheless, by going by the book, as they say, here are some points that advocate being proactive than being ‘inactive’ as I prefer to call it.

1. ‘Being Proactive’ is the vision and ability to align the tasks well in advance to avoid overlaps and mishaps.

2. ‘Being Proactive’ is to foresee the possible problems and work on the contingencies in parallel with the master plan. It is strongly recommended to execute your contingencies before they execute themselves at the required time, because you never know whether your contingency plan is going to be successful or not. Hence be sure about it by testing the contingency in advance especially when the risk factor is high.

3. 'Proactive People' have the analytical skills to understand any situation in detail so that they can see low level risks and plan accordingly.

My most dear and favourite example of a ‘Tree’ explains this further in a lucid and simplest way.

‘Organizers’ are the Roots of the Tree – always adapting to the situation, expanding and developing deeper and deeper to form a solid foundation on which the outgrown body can stand firmly.

‘Reactors’ are the Branches of the Tree that develop as and when required, are flexible and can succumb to strong forces like wind or an attack.

‘Commoners’ are the Leaves of the Tree that are most fragile and vulnerable to even slightly paced wind and get detached and go-with-the-flow.

TWO things to learn from this allegory –

1.       Branches and leaves are dependent on roots and they should stick to the tree to survive.

2.       All of us has a choice what category you want to belong to, don't we...?

Grow wisely...!