Last night I turned the heat way down in my house for some reason only to wake up to a frigid cold house this morning. Luckily the dogs kept me warm. Near icicles hanging from my nose, survival mode kicked in as I raced to layer up, turn on the coffee, and bring some heat into the space! Fortunately that kind of wake up call is relatively easy to take care of…
Is there a way we can change the reactive state we’ve always approached life with when faced with a wake up call?
This past week I was doing a training with members of The Six Figure Mentors and it had me thinking a lot about how we react to wake-up calls and how they affect us. I’ve always been fascinated by the way we humans handle the things that come up in our life. When challenges arise, how do we react to and deal with them?
The question is, how can we actually begin to make the shift so that less of our life is about being reactive and more of it is spent on being proactive when these things happen?
Is there a way we can actually program our brain to become our friend and ally instead of our antagonist?
According to research, (as taught in the Landmark program called Direct Access), a person’s reflexes kick in automatically, up to a second, before one consciously decides to take action; before we rationalize it. Yet in our minds, we think that we decided it in our mind.
When we have a reaction or a reflex (most of our actions are reflex actions), that causes our mind to trigger a decision about what to do. The point here is that we go into reactive mode whether we want to or not. It’s not like we choose to do it. That’s why it’s called “reflex”.
Take pet peeves for example… what they indicate is that there is something, some issue carried inside that gets triggered by certain circumstances or by that sequence of events. Even though we can’t consciously control whether or not we react, the reaction is an automatic brain pattern that fires upon that circumstance or by that sequence of events. It just happens.
The good part about this is that we can actually reprogram brain patterns.
Embrace the concept that you can actually change your mind and that we are not our thoughts or our emotions. Whether it’s a pet peeve, stubbing your toe, getting a call from creditors, or waking up to frost on your window panes and icicles on your nose… what we are is a brain-pattern-firing-automated-hunk of human cells that has been programmed over time to react through certain circumstances.
So you see, it doesn’t matter what it is, the way we react makes us who we are! We become very predictable to the people around us; the way we react becomes our image, our reputation.
Yet, we are not our thoughts, we are not our reactions, those are simply programmed brain patterns that have set into our subconscious over time based on a million different factors. The good news is we can actually change those things. It’s simple but it isn’t easy.
We no longer need to fall victim or be tortured by the beck and call of those feelings and emotions, problems and challenges. We can change it so that we don’t have to let those things run on autopilot any longer. It’s a simple skill you will have to learn to apply yourself to in order to break from the previous patterning.
They can only be happy when things are going their way – how limiting! What if happiness had nothing to do with anything circumstantial? What if happiness had nothing to do how much money you have, how many bills you’ve got to pay, whether someone approves of us… Intrinsically it doesn’t but our conditioning makes it that way; we are all products of our environment…
Accept the challenge. Solve it!
By shifting into reactive mode we’re letting our emotions take us down reactive street. Really what we’re doing then is precluding ourself from actually being powerful and taking control of the situation.
If a person’s default mode of action is upset, anger and frustration that is very limiting because you’re immediately put into the most debilitating state which is, fear-based emotions. Meanwhile where you really you need to be is in your most creative state because the matter only becomes a problem if you can’t solve it.
Don’t get sucked into everyone else’s world first.
How much do we love to be in reactive mode? How many of us check our emails and social media feeds first thing in the morning? “Maybe I’ll just take a quick look to see how everyone else is thinking this morning…” – just so we don’t have to think intentionally – it’s almost as though we don’t want that space to deal with ourselves or our thoughts because it’s really quite uncomfortable; it’s too challenging. So, we flip on the TV, check the radio, scan the social feeds and immediately get sucked into everyone else’s world.
Wouldn’t you agree that choosing to take that route is a way not to be responsible for creative thought? Oh, that takes so much effort!
Try something different today.
Come from a proactive place by tapping into your creative self first instead of giving it away to everyone who wants a piece of your time. Do those five things first that will move your life and your business, forward.
The choice is up to each one of us:
Are you going to allow the rest of the world to pull you along OR are you going to proactively choose what it is that you will experience and accomplish?
Start taking care of yourself first for only then can you be fit to care for another.
Have a PROactive day!
All my best,
Jay Kubassek
This post is based on my February 4th, 2014 podcast. Check it out below…
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