From Reactive to Proactive: Designing a Life You Love

If you're feeling like you're reacting to life rather than actively designing it, then you may be falling into the trap of being reactive rather than proactive. Today, I'm going to talk about how to go from reactive to proactive, basically allowing you to design a life you love.

If you’re reacting to life, then you’re not actively designing it. This matters so much because living proactively lets you focus on what truly matters: YOU - what you want, what you need, your desires, your passions, and the legacy you’re meant to leave in the world.

This topic came up because just this week, in the last quarterly session of the Dynamic Year Program (now called The Breakthrough 2025), we worked on what I call the Dynamic Life Blueprint (now called the Breakthrough Blueprint). That’s your theme, guidelines, values, new paradigm, and goals for the entire year. The feedback I got was incredible—women shared how much better they were able to focus and achieve their goals because they were proactive in designing what they wanted their lives to look like.

I'm going to go through some main points around the problems of reactivity, the power of being proactive, and how you can shift from being reactive to being proactive, and what that would look like for you.

Now, I mainly speak to high-achieving women, success-driven women, and women who are easily or maybe just through hard work, are able to get so much done and achieve so much. Then they get to a point when they meet me, and they say, 

• “Wow, I've achieved so much. Is this it?” Or 
• “I've achieved so much? Why don't I feel happy?” Or 
• “I've achieved so much, I've had so much success, but I feel like I'm just successful on paper, rather than, personally successful.”

There are so many things that come up, and a lot of times it's because we are dealing with being reactive. 

The Problem with Reactivity

Now, the problem with reactivity is we are constantly responding to oeoples’ needs, wants, agendas, and goals, without prioritizing our own

Many times, when I'm speaking on stage, doing a keynote or a workshop, We go through an activity where I get them to write down all the things that are a priority, they name their kids, their work, their marriage, or even their pets. I hear people say, “I'm not even on my own priority list.” Sometimes, they add in their health or spiritual life—but rarely do they put their own name on the list.

That's because we're often being reactive to what society wants for us, or making us like that whole “should” idea, or it is that feeling of the pressure of “I have to be the greatest mom, the greatest wife, the greatest neighbor, the greatest daughter, the greatest friend etc.” 

In being reactive to those pressures of society, we start to forget, or we don't even look at the pieces that we need, want and desire.

When you're being reactive, you're going to feel out of control in your life. You've given up the reins. A lot of these women have taken back the reins, and that's how we move into the power of proactivity. Being proactive because if we're not, the default will be work. Our default will be other people's agendas. 

You may be like, “No, I get a lot done, and I put my needs above others.” I once had a client who really wanted to go away on the weekends, and her daughter felt like she didn't have much of a life, and so she was constantly asked to dog sit. She then felt like, “I can't go and do things because I have this dog to take care of.” 

Then, on the flip side, I've had clients who have grandkids and then their kids expect them to take care of the grandkids or because you're not perceived to have a very stressful life, even though you're working, but they see you around, they think that then you can take on all these board positions or these other rules where it's just too much, and you don't realize it's too much until you've said yes, yes, yes, yes, and that's when you're being reactive.

The Power of Being Proactive

When you're being proactive, you're defining your priorities, your needs, your wants, and then you're able to put those things ahead of others. 

I'm not saying you're a parent and now neglect your kids. No. If we think of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, the need for a secure and safe environment, food and water, and then we get into love and other things, once your kids are fine, once other people you’re responsible to are fine, you get to step into that place of being proactive for your own desires. 

But if you’re most often saying “yes”, or you don’t know what's important for you and then saying yes to everything else, how are you ever going to create space for yourself? 

The power of proactivity gets you to a place of creating space for yourself that aligns with your goals, with your values, and with the things that are most resonant or energy giving for you. 

Sometimes, when we fall into reactivity, we're saying “Yes” to things that are causing us dissonance, lack of energy, a little bit of friction, and we only have so much time and so much energy and so many resources to give. When we are being proactive, we're actually able to get the things that we want done. 

Shifting from Reactive to Proactive

When we think of it this way, that shift from being reactive to proactive, it's so crucial to be able to take the time to pause and to look at:

• What do I want in every single area of life? 
• Am I satisfied in this area? Yes or no? 
• How satisfied am I in every single area? 
• What do I need in every area?
• Six months or one year down the road, what do I want in every area?  
• What does that look like? 
• Then beyond that, what's ideal in every area, without limitations? 

Without thinking, “Well, this is realistic. This is what other people have.” It's like, what do YOU want? What does that look like for YOU?

Once you are able to measure your satisfaction in life, this is something I do in my one-on-one sessions, in my special Satisfaction Shift Strategy Sessions. It's also something I do in Dynamic Balance. 

When you do that, it's going to be so clear as to where you need to put your time, your energy, your resources. In Dynamic Year, I was talking before about how we create your theme, your new paradigm, your guidelines, your values and your goals. Again, when you have that and when you have the wheel of life with the wants and needs for six months or a year from now, you're going to be able to start each day with a plan of what to focus on.

Rather than sitting back being reactive, waiting for others to set the agenda for you, you're in this really sweet place of “I already know what I want.” I get to not only be proactive in this, but I get to implement things at a pace that's going to have me be even more successful and even more satisfied. 

Having that plan is really going to help you to set some boundaries, protecting that time that you have, protecting your energy, keeping you in resonance and really protecting your resources, because we know that we only have so much time, energy and money to go around.

These are the key things. These have been game changers for me as a high achieving woman who's been constantly driven to do and do and do and do some more. I find that there come moments where…

• I will self abandon for others. 
• I will put others' needs ahead of my own. 
• I will find it hard to say “no”. ​

If you're suffering from any of those, then it could be that you’re being a bit more reactive in your life, and you're not really able to fully design a life you love. When designing a life you love, you’ll face realities about what life is, and you can't put everything in your control. But what if you could grab back the reins? Because maybe you're feeling like, “I'm on a runaway train, and I don't know where this track is going, and it feels completely wrong.” Or you're in a bus being driven by someone else, and you want to get off, but you just can't. 

When you get to be proactive, create your own plan, and create what truly matters to you. life will be different Not only will you be able to satisfy your needs, your wants, your desires, and your ideal life, but think of the legacy that you're going to leave. Think of the impact you're going to have on others. 

I knew I’d be limited if I was to drop everything for everyone else all the time. If I were to say “yes” to everything that came across my desk, I'd have no time. We are only given so much time on this earth. I hope that today you're going to be thinking about, “Am I being reactive? Am I dealing with other people's shoulds, other people's agendas, other people's priorities? or is there time, space, energy and resources for me and myself?” 

If this is something you want to go through, the Wheel of Life and measuring your satisfaction and coming up with your Breakthrough Blueprint, reach out to me. We have the NEW program called The Breakthrough 2025 coming up soon.  Email me [email protected] if you want to be on the waitlist.

If you prefer to do it 1:1, please feel free email me [email protected] I'm happy to talk about how we can go through this together. ​

I hope you switch from being reactive to proactive. Even if you're like, “I'm super proactive and I have a plan”, there are things that you can really evaluate to see if you are fully, completely on the right track for you.

Stay dynamic!

Read my other blogs:

1. 6 Reasons Why High-Achievers Often Feel They Need to Do or Be More to Feel Valued
2. Hell Ya Energy
3. You’re Not Stuck, Your Mission Just Got Bigger