Habit #1 Proactivity

I know everyone wants to read a blog about what's been going with the fam and most importantly the girls. That's coming. I have lots of cute pictures from Halloween and other fun things, but I wanted to post this really quick.
Carson began his doctoral program a few weeks ago and one of the requirements was to build a 'leadership library'. To me that sounds like a very arbitrary requirement for an online class, but whatever. Thank goodness for Amazon.com and the fact that we've gotten all of these self help/leadership books for next to nothing in most cases. Almost all of them are by Steven R. Covey or his sons because really, does it get much better than that when it comes to leadership?We got The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People on CD and we've been listening to it together for the last few days. Talk about a mind blow. It is the most incredible thing ever! We're only into habit one but I can totally see how it all works and how much it can influence every aspect of your life. When we're done with this one, the next one our list is The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families and The 7 Habits of Happy Kids By Sean Covey. The last one is actually a series of chidlren's stories to help them leard at a young age how to be good leaders and use the habits on their own level. Maybe my kids are too young for it, but it never hurts to be prepared for what might come.
So I decided that out family's motto for the rest of November and December is:

Be Proactive

I feel that there are a lot of things in life where I/we play the victim. I use what Stephen R Covey calls reactive language. I say things like 'If only this haden't happened to me' or 'that person just makes me feel so (insert negative emotion here).' What good does it do me/us? When it comes right down to it, we all have the choice of how we are going to react to circumstances and scenarios. Thats one of the things that seperates us from the animals, it's our ability to reason out and detatch ourselves and thus observe our own selves and then make the best of our situation. Here's an excerpt from Wikipedia:

Being proactive means taking responsibility for every aspect of your life. Initiative and taking action will then follow. Covey also argues that man is different from other animals in that he has self-consciousness. He has the ability to detach himself and observe his own self; think about his thoughts. He goes on to say how this attribute enables him: It gives him the power not to be affected by his circumstances. Covey talks about stimulus and response. Between stimulus and response, we have the power of free will to choose our response.

Things that I'm being proactive about right now: Beefing up food storage, household organization, my interactions with people and not letting them walk on me. That last one is dealing more with how I let people treat me. If something bothers me, I'm not going to sweep it under the rug and pretend like it didn't happen. I will choose to be stronger in the eyes of those around me.