“The easiest thing is to react. The second easiest thing is to respond. But the hardest thing to do is to initiate.” Seth Godin
Great quote from Seth Godin. It definitely speaks to some of the challenges I struggle with. With the constant bombardment of stuff. Task list, emails, texts, phone calls, coworkers, clients, relatives, meetings, projects, quotes, follow-up, etc. it is easy to understand how we fall so quickly into reaction mode. We allow all of these things to take our time, attention and focus which continues to push us into the reacting posture. But, also just as challenging is our responding. For me, when I’m in reactive mode and then I respond I do not think about my response. I have been scolded a ton of times of hitting send before thinking about my response. So how do we move from reacting to initiating?
Initiation takes planning and forethought. It requires us to own and manage our time so that we can have time to think about what might be coming at us. To plan our responses before the crises gets to us. It is asking for the meeting before we have a pressing need. It as reviewing the reports and understanding the numbers before the profits start to slide. It is having the family, owners or leadership team identify the big issues that are holding us back and start working on solving these issues proactively. Initiative means we stop waiting! Faith without works is dead so we need to start moving. Hopefully forward. Thinking, planning, solving, communicating, reviewing, studying, reflecting. We need to move from reacting to initiating. Let’s start getting ahead of the crises.
You got this. I say this almost every blog but you need to carve out 30 minutes to 60 minutes over the next week to rise above the day-to-day and look around. Look around today. Look around this week. Look around this month. Look around this year. Get some Clarity. Understand where you are but also clarify where you want to go and take the initiative to start the journey toward that new reality. Let’s go crush this!!
Get a copy of my book Choices to help you get started. https://www.choiceconsultingman.com/choices/
Coming this fall my new book Clarity. https://www.choiceconsultingman.com/clarity/