Proactivity - Solve Problems WhileThey Are Still Small

When people ask me why I don’t do consulting work anymore, I recall the most challenging project I ever had, which was to present training in creative problem solving to the mid-level managers of Banamex (National Bank of Mexico) – 20 years ago. It was a memorable experience. During the month I was there, I learned a lot about Mexico, its people, and the language.

But two things made the work particularly difficult.

First, every aspect of the training had to be in Spanish. That meant I had to present through an interpreter, and all my materials had to be translated into Spanish—including my brain-based personality assessment. What a task that was! I must have been more optimistic and adventurous back then, because if I had to do it over, I would have suggested they find someone else.

But I eventually pulled it all together and shipped everything to Juan, my human resources point of contact at the bank.

The other thing that made my experience so challenging was Juan. Juan was a great guy. He spoke fluent English, and he treated me with enormous kindness. He made sure I was comfortable and showed me around Mexico City. A family man, he invited me to spend the weekend at his home in Guadalajara. We became friends.

What made Juan a problem was his inability to plan. He was spontaneous about everything. I watched in horror when we arrived at the first hotel and saw that he hadn’t reserved any presentation rooms. We had to take what was left. The rooms were too small, and the participants complained. Also, he failed to arrange for the earphone system for the interpreter. I asked him about the activities agenda, and he had none. He said he thought it would be great if the entire group went to a local theater that evening. But he made no reservations, and he didn’t make the call for the buses until the participants were standing outside the hotel. We arrived at the theater late. I was appalled but he seemed happy with everything. I was diplomatic as I pleaded with him to make advance arrangements. He never did though, program after program, hotel after hotel.

It wasn’t a matter of forgetfulness. He simply seemed unwilling or unable to make the effort to be proactive.

Proactivity requires a kind of mental time-travel. You begin in the present, where you sense a problem or a gap between what you want and what you have. Then you visit the future, where you imagine what’s possible. Back in the present again, you wonder what you could do to make that future happen, which sends you into the past, where you recall instances of cause and effect that have worked for similar challenges. In the present again, you use those lessons to construct a step-by-step plan to create your desired future.

Whew! No wonder Juan disliked being proactive! That’s why it’s considered a personal strength — because it takes real effort to translate a vision into action.

If you want your kids to go to college, you know it’s going to be even more expensive when they’re ready than it is today. Maybe they’ll get scholarships, student loans and part-time jobs. But if their education really means that much to you, when they’re small you’ll set up a system for saving the money.

If you don’t like being blown away by a crisis, keep an eye to the future so you can see the problem building. It’s a lot easier to solve it while it’s still small.

If you want to avoid a fatal heart attack, the time to change your exercise and eating habits is now, not after the first signs of heart disease.

Desire is good, but to get what you want, you have to go beyond that. As the saying goes, “Good days don’t just happen. You make them happen." 

A Fortune Cookie...

Court the future you desire, or she will fall in love with someone else.

More Fortune Cookies...

The story behind the Fortune Cookies...


Post by Dennis E. Coates, Ph.D., Copyright 2010. Building Personal Strength .

Jack Canfield - Planning Your Day

Jack Canfield, co-author of the original Chicken Soup for the Soul, has a simple, practical tip for getting the most out of your day. What he suggests sounds obvious, but not many people do it.

Time is precious. When your time runs out, there'll never be any more of it for you. So you need to make the most of the time you have. And there's no way of knowing how much time that is. I believe Jack's tip could make a difference in your life.

Here's the brief video clip...



Other great videos from Jack...

The Success Principles

Optimism - Create Your Attitude

...and best wishes for your health, strength and prosperity!

Post by Dennis E. Coates, Ph.D., Copyright 2010. Building Personal Strength .

Avoiding the Awful Outcome - Two Very Different People

Today, some encouragement. But first, some straight talk. If you feel that's not something you want to hear right now, then maybe you should click the Back button on your browser. 

I'm thinking about two very different people.

On the one hand, you have Carolyn, who tries to live a healthy lifestyle. She's a non-smoker. She's fortunate because she didn't have to quit. She's never smoked a cigarette in her life. She exercises 90 minutes five times a week. She prefers organic fruits and vegetables when she can get them, and she uses sugar, fat and alcohol only in moderation. She loves experimenting with herbs and spices to make healthy dishes taste wonderful. 

Most of her friends don't live this way, so why does she? She claims she was "scared straight" by the death of her mother at the age of 52, who had heart disease and Type II diabetes. In other words, at this time of her life she's proactively trying to avoid a similar fate. She knows what she should be doing for her own good, and she's doing it. 

On the other hand, you have her friend Daisy. Carolyn shares an interest in gardening with her, but Daisy's lifestyle is nearly the opposite of Carolyn's. Daisy loves pastries and the only exercise she gets is in her garden. She weighs 290 pounds, and she's been a heavy smoker since she was 14. Carolyn has made tactful suggestions, but Daisy always comes back with statements such as, "My grandmother smoked and drank until she died at the age of 91. Not everyone gets lung cancer, you know."

Daisy is in denial. She doesn't want to think about what could happen to her if she continues doing what she's doing. Change would be miserably hard, and she can't bear the thought of it. So she rationalizes that everything will be OK. She puts these issues out of her mind and goes about her life. Someday, she might be willing to change her habits, but only when her back's against the wall and she sees no other choice. But of course by then it may be too late.

You probably know someone like Daisy - an otherwise good and intelligent person who acts in an irrational way. Looking into the future and doing the right thing to avoid an awful outcome seems too hard - too far to go. 

Maybe you have similar issues. Do you have symptoms of a health problem that should be checked out by a doctor, but you discount the seriousness of it? Is there something really important you need to do, but it means sacrifice and so you put if off? Do you hate your job, but you stick with it because the alternatives seem overwhelming and risky? Are you overweight? Do you smoke? Do you drink too much?

If so, maybe you haven't tried to make positive changes because your pattern has become an ingrained part of your life, and doing the hard work to establish a new pattern seems unthinkable. So you don't think about it.

I hope you don't have issues like these. I hope you're the kind of person who faces tough choices, sees the potential consequences, and does the right thing. 

This year, someone I know, a heavy smoker, died of lung cancer before she was 50.

A friend of mine once had a serious alcohol problem. When his family and business partners threatened to leave him, he decided to go into rehab. With dedication, he completely turned his life around. But back then he wouldn't do anything about it until it was almost too late.

I encourage you not to wait until your situation is so painful or scary that your back's against the wall. Acknowledge what you need to do, gather up your personal strength, get help if necessary, and do something about it.

Post by Dennis E. Coates, Ph.D., Copyright 2010. Building Personal Strength . (Permission to use photo purchased from istockphoto.com)

Conscious Personal Strength - Self-Awareness and Proaction

I recently posted about an incident that happened to me at the San Antonio airport after Kathleen and I returned from Nashville. My thoughts have returned to this incident several times since. I've learned that when that happens, something's going on in my brain and I should check it out.

In summary, here's what happened. I was confronted with a bit of everyday adversity. But before I reacted, I focused on my feelings, my thoughts and my behavior. I asked myself which personal strength behavior patterns I should engage to be effective in that situation. 

Yes, I really am a walk-my-talk kind of guy; and yes, I talk and write a LOT about personal strength. But you wanna know something? I've never done this before. I've never consciously and proactively created an intention to exercise specific personal strengths and then followed through. Typically, I just try to do the right thing, keying off ingrained personal strength behavior patterns.

I guess my brain keeps coming back to this incident because the results were positive. I've concluded that this kind of self-awareness and conscious action are an intelligent way to behave in challenging situations.

I'm aware, though, that this isn't the way most people behave. Most people aren't self-aware and self-analyzing while they go about their business. They just do what they feel they have to do without a whole lot of analysis. Which really is the way to go when your goal is enjoyment. But maybe there's a lot to be said for consciously managing your thoughts and behavior in difficult situations - to increase your chances of doing the right thing.

So today when I should have been taking a nap, here's what I was thinking. One of the things that makes human beings unique from other animals is our prefrontal cortex, which comprises
25% of the thinking part of our brain. It's the part of the brain that two and two together to determine "what things mean" - how things relate, why, cause-and-effect, reasoning, and planning. Other mammals have limited prefrontal cortex, though it's not organized by language or logic. Cats have about 3% prefrontal cortex. Chimpanzees have nearly 10%. The vast human potential for this kind of thinking separates us from all other creatures, which rely largely on instinct to take action.

Stephen Covey focuses on this uniqueness in a remarkable video clip. He suggests that instead of being driven by stimulus-response, humans are capable of stimulus-analysis-response - a HUGE difference. In short, we can think before we act, which is what I was doing at the airport. 

Actually, I was doing something more than that. I was thinking about how I should think. I was managing how I should analyze my situation. I started by being self-aware. What am I feeling right now? What am I thinking? What's important? What should I do? Not just how to solve my problem. But how should I behave while solving my problem?

It occurred to me that while we have a word for the stimulus-response way of acting - "reaction" - we don't have a word that represents the stimulus-analysis-response way of acting. Well, I think it's an important enough aspect of life to warrant its own word. So to do my part to promote and nurture this part of our human potential, I hereby coin a new, much-needed word - "proaction" (pronounced pro-action). It means consciously intended, planned action. Stimulus-analysis-response. It's related to another word: "proactivity," which I've been using for years, meaning the tendency to plan ahead  before taking action.

Now that I have this cool new word, I can more easily talk about what I'm trying to do on this blog. I'm trying to encourage people to exercise proaction, to think about the concepts of personal strength as they go about their daily life. Consciously intended action will help them repeatedly exercise the right personal strength behavior pattern until it becomes an ingrained habit.

Post by Dennis E. Coates, Ph.D., Copyright 2010. Building Personal Strength . (Photo by Thomas Lersch, granted permission to use under GNU Free Documentation License from Wikimedia Commons.)

Brian Tracy on Proactivity - Your Number One Goal

Brian Tracy reveals "the secret to becoming a self-made millionaire." He really does. When you view the video, you'll hear that little voice in your head saying, He's right.

But will you do what he says?



"People begin to become great when they determine their major definite purpose, their number one goal, and they work on it every day." - Brian Tracy