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What does it mean to be proactive versus reactive in life? How can we do it every day?
Welcome back to The Burnout Doctor Podcast with Dr. Jessica Louie. Today, we are talking about proactive versus reactive living. Thank you for sharing your action steps from our last episode on 4 Things Burnout Teaches Us. Many of you are taking action by using our complimentary Burnout Starter Kit and Financial Freedom Kit – don’t forget to download yours today! We all write our own stories in our lives and homes. Let’s all bring joy into home and joy into work.
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A lot of times when I’m talking to students and clients, I hear that they are living in reaction mode. Letting others set the agenda. Letting others dictate their schedule.
Don’t know what I’m talking about? Here are some examples:
Do you open your email any time of day or let it ping you a notification on your phone and you immediately go to look at it, read it and respond to it? Reactive mode.
Do you go into a work meeting without an agenda and set time to end the meeting at? Reactive mode.
Do you wake up in the morning with no idea what your plans are for the day? And I don’t mean you have white space or quiet time to let the day unfold, you literally have no routines or schedules. Reactive mode.
Do you have lack goals in life – personal or professional? Reactive mode.
When we are in reactive living, we let others take over our time, energy and focus. We literally let the tides ocean toss and turn us around. Each new wave catches us by surprise. And sometimes you barely stay afloat fighting in reaction mode.
I know this reactive living mode. I was there during my own burnout.
How can we transition from reactive living to proactive living?
Change your Perspective
We all want to move away from feeling stressed and overwhelmed, right? This is how reactive living feels. As much as we want to reduce the overall stress in our life, one of the top ways to reduce it is to react to life events differently. Instead of reacting to an external event negatively, we can reframe our mindset and perspective around it.
Take a simple example like the weather. Instead of reacting to a “bad” weather day such as clouds and rain, and deciding it will be a bad day because of it, reframe your mindset. I’m grateful we have rain today after the severe drought we’re experiencing in Southern California and I hope it helps our garden vegetables and flowers grow a little fuller.
To further change your perspective, think about your emotions when you are in reactive living. Do you say things like, “If only they treated me better, I could be happy” or “I wish I had more time for that…”
Remind yourself, you choose your feelings. You choose to subject yourself to external forces and external emotions. You choose if you feel happy, sad, angry or frustrated. We choose if we stay in a powerless position with self-pity or shifting blame on others.
Being proactive means we concern ourselves only with things that are within our control. We can’t alter how someone talks to us or how the weather will be today. But we can choose our thought processes and our responses to these things.
Incorporate Routines into your Life
I love routines and I’ve talked about morning and evening routines on episode 167.
Being proactive in life can mean we take control of our time so no one else controls it for us. This could mean setting up healthy boundaries on Episode 115 and around digital communication tools on Episode 65 and 66.
This could mean setting up routines and schedules for errands like grocery shopping and laundry.
When we run on routines, we can feel in control of our lives.
Set Goals for your Life
I love setting goals and reverse engineering how they will be accomplished in small baby steps in my life. We can dream big and think about 1 year from today or 5 years from today. Then we can reverse engineer a yearly goal down into quarterly goals, monthly goals, weekly goals and even daily goals. We can celebrate the small wins along the way.
Go back to episode 167 on Goals.
Making goals and working towards them empowers us and reinforces the control we have in our lives. We are working towards something that an external force cannot alter.
Make sure you’re following along on our YouTube channel (youtube.com/drjessicalouie) as well with new videos going live every Saturday!
Until next time, spark joy my friends!
Note, my views are my own and are not associated or representative of my employer(s).
This podcast is for educational purposes only and not medical advice.