The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change was a ground-breaker when it was first published in 1990, and it continues to be a business bestseller with more than 10 million copies sold.
The first of the seven habits is “be proactive.” Being proactive is about taking responsibility for your life. You can’t keep blaming everything on your parents or grandparents. Proactive people recognize that they are “response-able.” They don’t blame genetics, circumstances, conditions, or conditioning for their behavior. They know they choose their behavior. External forces act as stimuli that we respond to. Between the stimulus and the response is your greatest power–you have the freedom to choose your response. One of the most important things you choose is what you say. Your language is a good indicator of how you see yourself. A proactive person uses proactive language–I can, I will, I prefer, etc.
Instead of reacting to or worrying about conditions over which they have little or no control, proactive people focus their time and energy on things they can control. The problems, challenges, and opportunities we face fall into two areas–Circle of Concern and Circle of Influence.
Proactive people focus their efforts on their Circle of Influence. They work on the things they can do something about: health, children, problems at work. Reactive people focus their efforts in the Circle of Concern–things over which they have little or no control: the national debt, terrorism, the weather. Gaining an awareness of the areas in which we expend our energies in is a giant step in becoming proactive.
HeeJoo Park, the CEO of Key Compounding Pharmacy, decided to use the book as a development tool to help the company’s management team and staff. In this interview, she explains how the company has adopted the principle of being proactive, and shares some stories of the positive impact it is already having on her team.
Click the play button below to listen to the interview with HeeJoo Park, the CEO of Key Compounding Pharmacy
