Are You Being Too Reactive?

“In the face of great challenges, you can choose to live reactively as a victim, or choose to proactively take control, with awareness and accountability.”

Isaac Lidsky

“Reactive”, it’s a term I’ve been stumbling across a lot recently. Through other blog posts, personal readings, even on social media, this word has somehow made itself an omnipresent force to be reckoned with. But what does it truly mean?

Well, according to Google (got to love the internet) reactive refers to acting in response to a situation rather than creating or controlling it. It’s basically the antithesis of being proactive.

It’s when you consistently allow what’s happening around you to significantly impact your mood as opposed to exercising your ability to choose how you react to everything and everyone else around you.

This is a topic I’ve found very fitting for anyone who periodic has issues controlling their emotions in response to life. From something major like verbal confrontations to something much simpler, like the weather.

Thus, to help each other out, today we’ll be discussing 3 signs that reveal if you or somebody you know is indeed too reactive. But before all of that….

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Okay, now on to the list!

#1. The Weaknesses Of Others Control You

In addition to your mood shifting in tandem with your environment, you allow other human beings to be the cause of your joy, pain, suffering, or annoyance. And you may find yourself defending this behavior with maxims such as “We all care what other people think”.

And albeit this statement does hold some truth to it, we don’t have to allow what other people say or do to dictate our reactions. From personal experience, I’ve come to understand that the faster you realize that most of the time what people say and do has nothing to do with you, but all to do with themselves, the faster you’ll be less stressed and anxious around them.

Because if individuals can easily identify you as someone whose composure is easily triggered by their slightest action, you will continuously be targeted and under their control. They will see you as just another receptacle to dump the uncomfortableness they feel about themselves.

So learn how to not take the actions of people so personally. Learn that not everything they do revolves around you. Most importantly, understand that you have the ability to control how you react to them. Remember, a calm and assured response trumps a torrential, melodramatic episode every time.

#2. You Have No Sense Of Responsibility

In the minds of the reactive, the universe and everyone else in it are just gargantuan pigeons designed to continuously crap on their day-to-day existence. These are individuals who always manage to find someway to blame everything wrong and seemingly wrong in their lives on any living thing around them.

These are people who never seem to run dry of excuses. They will literally bog you down with a million reasons why a situation isn’t working out, before giving you one solution on how to fix it. Hell, oftentimes they’d try to rope you into their non-ending pity party and then perhaps, find some way to associate you with the blame.

I urge you to be very cautious of people like this. Dealing with them on a consistent basis will drain you of your time, your energy, and definitely your patience. They are void of all sense of accountability. They hardly ever use the phrases “I was wrong”, “I am sorry”, “I should not have done that”, or “I could have handled that better”.

And until the reactive understand that responsibility is primarily “response ability” or the ability to control one’s response, they will forever roam through life wrongfully pointing their fingers at the world.

#3. Your Focus Is Always On What You Can’t Control

For some reason reactive individuals have the greatest difficulty dealing with the things that well in their circle of influence – the things they can control. These are things like their emotions, their reaction to stimuli, and their right to tap into mental resources before rendering a response.

Such mental resources include: imagination, consciousness, inner-strength, and self-awareness. These crucial, God-given tools are embedded into each and every human being and have a right to be used on an everyday basis. You see, by tapping into these tools more often, you’ll find yourself in better control of your mood.

What’s happening around will play less of a dictating role over you. Now, this isn’t to say you should become completely robotic and unmoved by everything around you. Not at all. Exercising these elements in your circle of influence will just increase your ability to function more proactively.

So stop over-concerning yourself with the trivial things you cannot control. The weather, what other people feel about themselves and try to project onto you, and so on. Life is going to bring its share of shitstorms, people are going to be idiots, but these things don’t have to define how you live your life. Besides, always being the victim gets old pretty fast.

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**Final Thoughts**

Undoubtedly Insighters, (that’s our name by the way; we’re an intelligent, observant lot, with an acquired sense of humor and a creatively, objective outlook on life) life is coming at us like a smoking-hot locomotive and we are standing in the midst of its tracks.

We can either get the hell out of the way and save ourselves or take the free ride at 5 and see where that carries us. Ultimately, the choice is ours.

And let me just say that what happens to us in life doesn’t substantiate life in it’s fullest. It’s how we react to what happens to us, how we choose to respond to life, what or who we allow to hurt us that compensates for the bigger portion of life.

So by all means, stop taking everything other people do or say so personally, stop blaming everyone but yourself for the inconveniences in your life, and for heaven’s sake, focus on the things that are yours to focus on, mind the business that’s yours to mind.

As always, take care of yourselves. Put your health and needs first. And continue to be your best, unapologetic self. Love you guys!

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