Hi guys,
Since I'm bored overseas now (its 10pm here) (ie. 5am in sg), I shall write a random post on the viola blog. For those who read "7 Habits of Highly Effective People" most of the stuff here will sound very familiar.
This post will be on Responsibility and Proactiveness.
If you are reading this sentence, scratch your nose. *pause* . Ok now think about what just went through your mind. Did you really scratch your nose? What were you thinking at the same time? "Why the heck does he want me to scratch my nose? Is he retarded?" If you are thinking something along this line, congratulations, you are a self-aware individual.
Humans are by nature self-aware, but many people don't use this skill to their max. Many don't even see the importance of self awareness. Think about this, if you don't even know how you think about yourself, how are you able to know what others think about themselves? How would you be able to effectively communicate with others well? More importantly, one must be aware that you are not your mood, feelings or thoughts. If you can think about your feelings, thoughts, etc and control them, "you" and "your feelings, thoughts, etc" are two different stuff altogether. Making this segregation is a very important step towards proactiveness.
So once you've acknowledged that you have feelings and you are aware of it, lets think about what really affects our feelings and thoughts in our daily lives. Stephen R Covey calls it the "social mirror" where people around you reflect what you are. This reflection is hugely biased and although many of us know that we should not listen to these reflections, we still respond to them like self-aware idiots.
When someone says you are slow, or you are stupid, what will you do? Box him? Turn emo and hide in a corner? A large misconception about stimuli is every stimuli will generate a standard response. VERY WRONG. Have you ever tried insulting Larry? Or insulting me? Do both if you doubt my statement. Both of us have very different methods of handling stimuli. Ok just kidding. Back to serious stuff. What makes humans smart and dominate the world is: self-awareness and self-programming, imagination, conscience and independent will. We are in control of our actions.
It's just like a MCQ: What will you do if someone insults you? A) punch him B) punch yourself C) jump building... etc. Each response towards a stimulus will generate different consequences. Between stimulus and response is human being's greatest power: the power to choose. And that is proactivity. Proactiveness means more than taking initiative, it also means being responsible for our own lives. Our behaviour is a function of our decisions, rather than our conditions.
Responsibility - "Response-ability" - is the ability over your response. People with responsibility do not blame their environment or conditioning for their behavior. They know it is a product of their own conscious choice based on their values rather than feelings.
Choose what is best for you. Be proactive, not reactive. Take the recent fight in the camp for example, both Jason and Tianhao are reactive people. Should you be in their shoes, what would you do? Allow your feelings to take charge of your actions and deliver the first punch (or return the punch)?
Thats it for now. lol...
Cheers
Choong
