This is episode 52, and I'm talking reactivity and life ruts. Specifically in this episode, I'm going to be talking about what being reactive in life looks like versus what proactive living looks and feels like, and why that even matters. I'm also going to talk about how to start pulling yourself out of this space, and how to get yourself out of that kind of groundhog day, chasing a tail, never quite being ahead of the game kind of feeling. Specifically, I'm diving into three stages or three steps that are crucial to pulling yourself out of this reactive way of dealing with life, and they're the things that help pull you back up.
Now, confession, this is really relevant for me at the moment. One of the benefits of being knowledgeable about psychology and having great self-awareness is also knowing when you are falling into unhealthy or unproductive habits or routines. I don't seem to go down my rabbit holes anywhere near as far as I used to, but I'm still human. So I'm going to talk a little bit more about how I've been feeling a little bit on the back foot lately, and how I've really been functioning from this reactive rather than proactive space in my life in the last couple of months.
So stay tuned to hear more about that on the other side of the intro. Welcome to Here to Thrive. I'm your host, Kate Snowwise. This is a podcast with people who are ready to step up and live a happier life.
It's for those of us who are dedicated to understanding ourselves and getting the best that we can out of this thing called life. It's a mix of psychology and modern spiritual thought, always with a focus on practical advice so that you can take it back and apply it to your own life. I don't believe we're here to merely survive. I truly believe we're here to thrive.
So let's get going. Now, as I mentioned on the other side of the intro, I've been feeling pretty reactive in my life recently, and it was one of the reasons I wanted to record this episode. Basically, I needed my own little pep talk. But interestingly enough, I noticed that a number of my clients I ended up having this conversation with in the last few weeks as well.
I'm not the only person who is falling into this mode of functioning. And I'm thinking if I've had this conversation a number of times over the last few weeks, there is a bunch of you that could benefit from it too. So I want to start this episode by asking you a question. If I was to ask you right now how you feel like you're living your life, what would you say?
Do you feel like you're currently in a reactionary mode or a proactive mode? Are you simply reacting to what is in front of you right now? Or do you feel like you are proactively getting what you need out of life? They're two very different energy states, and that is crucially important.
So what does reactive living look like? When we move into those reactionary phases in our lives, we tend to get sucked into the doing. Often we feel like things are coming at us so quickly, they're feeling overwhelmed, that we don't really have a chance to kind of look up and take stock of where we're heading and if it's even where we want to be going. When we are in reactive states, we just deal with whatever is right in front of us.
That could be the never-ending list of to-dos that you feel like you just can't get hold of, or it could be simply the daily grind of your life that you're not sure how to snap out of. But that reactionary feeling is one of kind of like Groundhog Day, I'm in a rut. It's that feeling almost like we are being sucked down a bit of a hole or getting stuck in the same old, same old routines and not necessarily feeling that joyful about it all. It's like our energy isn't necessarily flowing in the direction that we want it to.
If I was trying to summarize it, that's how I would say feeling reactive can feel like. So I'm a human too, and I've been super busy lately, which is such a blessing. I so appreciate we wonderful listeners and my beautiful clients out here. I'm so glad I've been able to create my dream job, but the reality is that I haven't been doing all of my dream job.
Instead, I have been reacting to my workload and feeling a bit like I'm on the back foot and not necessarily thinking about where I want to take my business in the future or working on any strategic project or my next step, if that makes sense. So I've basically been dealing with whatever has been in front of me. What's on my to-do list today? What's the stuff that needs to be attended to?
What is screaming the loudest for my attention? The truth is that proactive goals don't scream at us. They don't scream to get out of attention. Instead, we have to very intentionally give them our time.
And that's what I've been doing such a good job of recently. I've been letting those strategic or bigger life questions or bigger life and business goals drop off my to-do list. I'm the type of person that needs to feel like I'm moving forward rather than just going round and round in the same old circles. So I feel a little bit like recently I've got myself trapped in a bit of a whirlpool and I need this pep talk to step away from just looking at the trees in front of me and recognize that I'm actually standing in the midst of a beautiful, big forest.
I need to take a big picture view with my life right now. And on my mind, I'm craving it. So I touched on it slightly. But what is proactive living?
I would say it's intentionally, proactively approaching your life. It's about planning seeds for tomorrow. It's not about dealing with whatever crop you're lucky enough to have right in front of you right now, but thinking, am I doing the work and am I sowing the seeds that I hope to reap in the future? You must plant today what you hope to reap in the future.
It reminds me of that quote, do something every day that your future self will thank you for. I've seen it floating around social media many times. I'm sure some of you have too, but it's great. Have you done that today?
Or do you plan on doing that today? Is there something in your day that your future self will thank you for? That is proactively living. Now, this doesn't have to be in contradiction to being grateful or living in the moment, but it's just about holding a vision that keeps you rising into the best version of yourself.
The two of these things can coexist. You can have a future vision and still be grateful and present in your everyday life. They're not mutually exclusive. What I love about having a future vision is that it gives you a roadmap for where you're heading so that you don't wind up looking back and one day just going, how on earth did I get here?
It stops you from drifting through life. And drifting to me is a classic hallmark of living in a reactionary mode. So just to really make sure you've got this point, I would say that proactive living is about knowing where your true north is and taking the teeny tiny baby steps towards it rather than wandering kind of aimlessly through the desert. It's about pointing yourself in the right direction.
So ask that question back at the start of the episode. And having me rattle on a little bit more about it, you might feel slightly. A better place to answer it. How do you feel about your life right now?
Do you feel like you're just reacting to life presently? Or are you proactively approaching what you do in your life right now? Now, if you feel like you might be leaning towards the reactive side of this equation, there is no judgment here. I've already confessed that.
I certainly am myself. But I'm going to give you these three points to help pull yourself back out. These are the same three things I'm going to be doing in my own life and have already started to do. First of all, it starts by a simple acknowledgement.
Now, this isn't one of the three points, but it's crucial. You have to decide that you want to do things differently. Because if you want different results, then you've got to do something differently. But that is a decision.
And unless you make that commitment, you're not going to get anywhere. So you have to decide that you're not content with how things currently are. Once you've had that acknowledgement or made that decision, my first piece of advice is to just slow down. If you feel like you're living in this reactive space, if you're running to catch up with your life, if you feel like you're always on the back foot, I kind of picture it like being on a hamster wheel and the little hamster's little legs are running in full tilt.
And they just don't know how to get off the wheel and spin around and around and around. If you feel like that could be you right now, just running around on your little hamster wheel, you've got to slow down. You can't get off the wheel until you do slow down. Every one of us has small spaces, small things we can do that can help slow us down.
So for example, for me, one of the actions I took was that I have cut down the nighttime coaching spaces that I offer. What can you do differently in your life? Take some of your power back. Now, this doesn't just have to be work related.
This is also totally relevant to life. Where can you see all these quiet moments of time back and start to slow down in your life? For me, that is absolutely related to coming back to my center. Personally, I have a little bit of a tendency to get flighty when I'm off center.
And I now know what it is that grounds me and brings me back down to earth. Personally, meditation, self-care and contemplative space. Oh my, my, I'm a different person. So gaps in my day are so good for me.
If I can get a quiet walk outside without my iPhone or a car ride, even a car ride with no radio on, oh my, my, I feel so much better for it. Now, everybody has different things, but those are some of the things that I know brings me back down to earth. It helps me slow down. I've got a blog post called Four Ways to Quieten Your Busy Mind, and I'll link to that in the show notes of this episode if you want to have some more ideas.
But be honest with yourself and consciously look for ways that you can slow down in your own life. Don't look for the excuses for why you can't. Just look for the solutions. There will be something that you have power over, that you have control over in your life that would make a difference.
So once you've slowed down and you've opened up just enough space, the next phase, I want you to self-reflect. Now, this is crucial. Knowing what matters to you most is so important. You can't line your life up to fulfill your needs if you don't know what those needs are.
You've got to start asking yourself the big questions. What do you value? What do you need in life to be happy? What do you need most?
Now, this is a lot of what I do with my one-on-one coaching clients because most of us have no idea how to self-reflect. We weren't taught this stuff in school. And these big questions can often feel really scary when we have no idea where to start. But it is in these questions.
It's in getting to know yourself better that you turn this equation around and adjust this, the self-awareness and the self-knowing that can help really pull you out of living a reactive life and put you into the proactive space. Before I really knew myself like I do now, I was totally drifting through life. It was these tools. It was asking myself the big questions that helped me spend most of my life now being much more proactive.
So one of the tools I do use in my coaching is values. And I really dive deep with my clients on their personal values. And I know mine. And I've had a couple of them totally running off on overdrive recently.
One of my personal values is achievement. I like to do well at what I do. And I love the idea of rising and continuing to grow. And another one of my values is contribution.
So if there's a way that I think I can make a difference to someone, I'm all over it. Both of these values have been running the show in my life lately. And I've been producing plenty. I've been contributing a lot.
But because of these needs, I have completely neglected some of my quieter values. I've been neglecting my need for a deep spiritual connection. I've been neglecting my need to focus on self-care and well-being. Basically, my achievement need and my contribution need have been running off unchecked and going crazy.
I've unconsciously given them permission to do so because I haven't been self-reflecting enough. I haven't been checking in with myself and noticing where I could be getting out of alignment. But now it's time for me to concentrate on getting myself back to my center so that I can really step up. Now, I know I just mentioned the whole one-to-one coaching thing, but it's not the only way to get in touch with yourself.
There are plenty of other ways. In fact, over the last few weeks, I've put together some freebies for you that was out of my desire to feel more proactive because one of my goals with my business is to connect with more of you and to contribute more at a greater level. So I created some free resources that you can go and download. If you go to my website, www.thrive.how, that's H-O-W, you will see a little tab there now called free resources.
One of the free resources there is specifically for self-reflection. I've got 21 journal prompts to help you deepen your self-awareness and inner knowing, to help you tap into your own guidance. Now, if you haven't heard me mention it yet, I truly believe that we're all our own best experts and that you already have the answers that you need. It's just a matter of diving in and pulling that information out of yourself.
And most of us don't know how to do that. So my hope is that these 21 journal prompts will help you on that journey. So please go and take advantage of that. So the first two points is slow down and give yourself space and then self-reflect.
The final thing to help pull yourself out of reactively approaching your life and get you out of those ruts that you might be feeling like you're living in is to move into action. Action is what makes the difference in our lives. We can think about it all we like, we can dream, we can vision, but unless we do, nothing changes. So after you've slowed down, you've got more in touch with your inner knowing, and you've taken that big picture of you, find the thing that you can focus on.
Find the thing that is calling your attention to it, that is demanding that you look at it. When you get quiet, what is the thing that says, do this? What is the thing that whispers to you? For me, I'm dedicated to more self-care.
That is where I am starting. Action, action, action. I encourage you to set some goals or intentions if you prefer the word. And once you identify the one or two things that you want to work on, set up some accountability with yourself.
If you're going to get really daring, perhaps you could even tell someone else. But the whole idea here is getting really explicit about the direction you want to be heading in, creating that North Star so that you have a direction to walk in. It doesn't have to be some grand audacious goal. It could be that you want to give yourself five minutes every day.
And it doesn't have to be long-term. It can be short-term. You can focus this week. I want to focus on, but start with something and commit to action.
It's super easy to get into this reactive way of living. And to be honest, most of us start here and just don't leave. There's very few people who are taught how to be proactive. We're not taught this in school, but it doesn't mean that you can't start.
If you feel like all you're doing is dealing with what is in front of you and that you're not being very intentional about what you want or where you want to go, that you're not taking that big picture of you, use these tips that I've discussed here today to get you started, to help bring this whole idea to life. Think about a business. Every business, make sure they have every decent business. I won't say every business, but after they get over a certain size, for sure, they all have a strategic vision.
They have foresight and they know the direction that they want to be heading in. It should be the same for us. That's what leads us to live powerful and meaningful lives. So in summary, the three things to start focusing on to pull yourself out of reactionary mode, to move into a proactive mode and to move away from those life ruts, slow down, make space to self-reflect and move into action mode.
Do something differently. As I mentioned, if you would like some free life planning resources and self-discovery journal prompts, head over to my website, www.thrive.how, and you will find that tab there with free resources. If this episode resonated with you, if it helped you see the world differently, if it made you think a little harder about your life, I would so appreciate if you could take a moment and leave me a review. I love your feedback.
It means so much to me. I've tried to make it a little bit easier because I know it can be difficult. So So if you go www.thrive.how forward slash review, it should take you right to the appropriate tab. I have another great interview for you next week.
I can't wait to share it. Till then, keep thriving.