Cecily wakes up early every morning to write two pages in her journal, first thing. It helps her to regroup, project her day, unburden herself, express gratitude. She walks Misty, her dog—both of them happy for the fresh air and exercise, and a chance to say hello at the local bodega, where Cecily grabs a latté, and Misty pats on the head. Cecily laid out her clothing and packed her briefcase the night before, along with a lunch bag with cheese sticks and apples that she’ll munch on her drive to school. She registers for early morning classes, to find easy parking spaces, and does most of her research and writing on campus. After returning home mid-afternoon—to beat rush hour traffic—she spends time with her family and then goes to work at the Amazon warehouse. Along with contributing to the household, she’s saving up for graduate school. After work, she sets up for the next day. Weekends are for reading, larger school projects, entertainment, socializing, shopping, nesting. Cecily enjoys her life and is proud of successes.
Life is full of emergencies, surprises, sidetracks, redo-s, U-turns—things to which we much react. But, comparing Cecily and Bart, it’s clear that Cecily is more in charge of her life. Bart is not. He shirks planning. He doesn’t take responsibility for his own well-being, and doesn’t shape his life. How can he? He’s too overwhelmed. He doesn’t reflect. He’s living in an undertow.
Cecily is proactive—Bart is reactive. Cecily plans, she prepares, she sets goals and meets them. She has a busy but not an overloaded life. Because she wants to enjoy her education, she never takes more than four courses a semester. She has plenty of energy because she takes care of her health, first. Cecily’s family and friends respect and appreciate her, because she sets appropriate boundaries.
Bart is constantly creating emergencies in his life—overwhelming himself and then running, running, running to avoid being overwhelmed. Bart is not in charge of his life. Recently, he had a heart attack and is now a burden to his family and friends.
Reflect, now. Are you living a reactive life? Do you consistently create emergency conditions—procrastinating until deadlines loom? Breaking promises so that you have to overdo to make amends? Ruining your health until you are laid up? Causing accidents because you’re too out of it to be responsible?
How are you proactive? Do you set healthy goals and meet them? Do you plan your days? Do you create healthy boundaries? When you need medical attention do you research your ailment and alternative treatments? Do you actively participate in your recovery?
Ask yourself how you can be proactive instead of reactive. Ask yourself—daily, and sometimes momentarily—Who’s in charge?
© Susanna Rich, 2020
Works Cited
Cover Art: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tex0zKuLCMg
Is there a term that means both proactive and reactive because that’s me! I like to say that I’m in charge of my life; I have to be, I’m a mother of two and I’m in graduate school full-time. I’ve been diagnosed with OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder), but only in my professional life not in my personal life. Let me explain. My school work and work things are all color coded and perfectly organized, where at home I’m a hot mess and there are things misplaced and missing. For the most part, I like to stick to a certain schedule or guideline for the present day.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, I do let things pan out until the very last second. I honestly enjoy the anxious feeling of wondering if I’m going to make it to work on time, will I finish this paper before the deadline, let’s see if I can make dinner and do five loads of laundry before 8 o’clock. This absolutely drives my husband crazy, but when I’m home with the kids I don’t want to do anything. I just want to play with my kids and watch Disney movies all day.
AWP 5000
I definitely agree with Emily, I am proactive and reactive for particular things. When it comes to school, work and family I was always on top of my game. I would usually plan ahead dates or events just in case. I prepared back-ups for my back-ups. I know that sounds dumb but I did it and was good at it. At work, I wore many responsibility hats: Kindergarten teacher, Pre-K & K head teacher, Program Coordinator ages 2-6, Designated Director, school nurse, counselor and etc. I did it all. Of course there were times when I tried to delegate the task to others but they slacked and it reflects on me. That's one of the main reasons why I left last June. My bosses weren't supportive and it all began affecting me personally, therefore I became reactive.
ReplyDeleteI always had a thing for making sure everyone else is ok. I am definitely reactive with myself. I am currently on the path to fixing my issues. Although my health isn't horrible, it can certainly be much better. I barely sleep which changes my eating habits (to barely eating) and it screws with my metabolism. Weight gain sucks when you don't need it. I make and follow through on all my checkups (dental & medical). I never realized how much the lack of sleep can mess with you brain. Step 1 is to work on my proactive sleep schedule. Step 2 make sure to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner. Step 3 appreciate step 1 and 2.
Meagan AWP 5000
Interesting story, Cecily is smart for planning things out. I learned that planning things out, especially my school work, is better than doing an assignment when I get the chance because planning things out will give you more time to get something done which will give you more time to get other things done. Bart on the other hand is not the way I act. I don’t like to create emergency conditions for myself or others. In fact, I think I avoid them. I love to have peace of mind and I learned to take it easy on myself through my past experiences working myself to hard.
ReplyDeleteI do not live a reactive lifestyle, when I get an assignment, I break it down into manageable parts that I can manage. I took 18 credits credit classes last semester because I wanted to rush my process of graduating. It was one of the worst mistakes I ever made. An assignment was always due, I had to stay later than usual at school in order to get assignments done, I got c’s and a D on my report card, it was bad, but I am grateful that my grades weren't too bad.
I learned to be more proactive through the reactive mistakes I’ve made in the past. I learned that I don’t have to stay busy all the time, it is ok to chill and regather yourself. Some healthy things I do is exercise, drink something warm in the mornings and I eat dinner. I also plan the things I need to do on a calendar the day before so I won't forget.
Is it safe to say I got emotional in towards the last statement before the question on reflecting? It made me remember years ago I was Bart. Now I’m both, I do plan and sometimes I do assignments or a responsibility last minute. As much as I plan and set everything or be ready for the next day. I have days where I don’t and it’s because shit always happens. Those distractions, emergencies those are some events or moments in your life you can’t control. Especially when I know my life has always been chaotic. I’m the go to person. I’m also the person that always says yes. I have my routine every day. But majority of the time I have to tailor my routine and push back some activities because there’s that distraction or that emergency. In my life, it’s not once in a while emergency. Its two or three times a week my routine gets interrupted. It is very hard can’t control those emergencies. That’s why I claim to be in between proactive and reactive. I tend to be more proactive for health and better lifestyle. My family has always been reactive lifestyle. It’s a quality I’m trying to break from the family cycle.
ReplyDeleteJessica M.
AWP 4000
Going along with the previous entries written by my peers, I agree that I am a mix of both proactive and reactive depending on the situation and circumstances that I place myself in. However, I used to be a lot more reactive the past few years than proactive. Recently, I feel as though I have a strong hold over my life. I make better decisions for myself and my own health. I would often look to other family members, friends, people I know through work or school and even strangers for input on what I should do in my life and what's best for my future. I realized that the more I listen to my intuition and my own passions, the more proactive I am. Since I was following the guidance of others that didn't always look for my best self interest, I was very reactive to what was happening around me. Then, I was engaging in procrastination, lack of planning, inconsistency, no motivation, and self sabotage. It's important to listen to my inner voice. I also learned reactive strategies from my parents and my older siblings, over time, I learned from them and developed my own approaches to a more positive lifestyle. I have a planner and I write my schedule out for the week or month even; that's extremely helpful for me. I hold the caregiver role in my family, I have been for some time, I love it in some regard, but in another way, it can be overwhelming. Since I am staying with my dad, who is on disability, and doesn't work, as well as my younger brother who has Autism, they both need assistance. However, I am teaching both of them to be more proactive instead of reactive. My dad struggles with his ego though, so any type of critique is very stressful for him. Since my mom passed, I definitely carry that role more than before. My sister lives in DE and my older brother lives in South Jersey, they help in their own way, but they also model the reactive lifestyle, but proactive in some ways. I believe that proactiveness and balance go hand in hand, which is an idea that every human struggles to achieve.
ReplyDeleteJulia Bolbotowski
Advanced Writing Poetry Spring 2020
For the past few years of my life, I’ve definitely found myself as a Bart- Reactive. I would always make excuses for myself to procrastinate. “Oh, I have more time to do this assignment later...Oh, I’ll just do it tomorrow..” But then tomorrow comes around and it still wouldn't get done. Even if it did, the task would be rushed and the bare minimum would be given from myself. This happened often while working out. I would assume I never had enough time for it… that I was too tired...and when I actually set aside time, I wouldn't push myself to continue because it was just “too hard”. Honestly, after the death of my grandmother a year and a half ago, I felt as if I gave up on myself. I let go of my happiness and healthy ways. Recently, my life has made a huge turn around since I became engaged in the summer. More so, in the last few months, I made a HUGE change in my life. Eating healthier and less, working out more, and focusing on my overall mental and physical health. I’ve definitely become a more proactive person. I set goals for myself where I never really took goals seriously before in the past. I enjoy my alone time where I used to hate being alone. I’m proud of who I’ve become and know that every single day I can improve myself. I also know how easily I can fall back into being a reactive person, so I always check myself (before I wreck myself)...lol!
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteIf I were to have to choose between one or the other, I definitely fall more in the lines of Bart- being a reactive individual. Although my life isn’t as hectic as my man Bart, I definitely have procrastinated things convincing myself “I work well under pressure”. In terms of meeting deadlines and getting to places on time, I tend to “proactively react” to timing. I’ll calculate how much time I need to arrive at a specific location, and add a nice little window of time so that I’m not late (or late as little as possible). For instance, I KNOW I won’t be able to wake up for morning classes, so I dont bother signing up for them. And I KNOW that it takes me 40 minutes to get to campus, and about 10 minutes to actually get into my classroom. So I’ll leave my house about 1hr before class starts so that I have those nice 10 minutes of breathing room, and can do/finish whatever it was I was doing before actually leaving the house. When it comes to completing assignments though, I like waiting till the absolute last minute (NOT in this course though, obviously). Studying for an exam? Yea let me wait untill 2 hours before the exam starts to actually start looking over my notes. Research Paper due 3 days? That's 2 days to relax, and 1 day to nothing but write. I would love to live a proactive life, planning my days weeks ahead of time. But that's not exciting. I get anxious waiting around for things, and find it better to live in the now, occupy with things that are exciting now and deal with things as they come. But I never intentionally put myself in harm's way, or grow so frantic and panicky to reach goals like Bart, I cause accidents. In conclusion, I would say I’m comfortably in between proactive and reactive, with my tendencies leaning slightly in the reactive side.
-Christian Paiz
AWP Spring 2020