I think I have visited this topic before on the boards, but I’d like to renew it if I may. I have a neighbor who runs 5 miles a day, only eats organic foods, has 1% body fat, and holds down a sales job for Pfizer (travels all the time)…He helps me quite a bit when I need help with heavy lifting projects etc…etc… Anyway, he is obviously the most proactive person I know. Oh and his wife is the same way.
What I wonder about is: Why are some people more proactive than others. I’ve wanted to lose the proverbial “last 20 pounds” for the past 5 years…I’ve come to the comclusion, it ain’t gonna happen. But then again my wife did it, but that was with the help of the South Beach Diet[sup]tm[/sup].
I am a selective proactivite, meaning when it comes to things that are very meaningful to me i.e. writing a really, thought provoking, stimulating lecture…or building a treehouse, or designing a really eclectic piece of furniture for a new home…things like that get me fired up and very proactive.
I see such a dichotomy with people, some are very proactive in their respective disciplines be it, mothering, teaching, engineering, or mountaineering, different things light the fire under different peoples ass. But there are some who let the world pass them by…it is these people I wonder about. Why can’t some people turn themselves around with ease? How can others seemingly do it with little to no effort?
How about you, how proactive are you?
Not at all. I’m very lazy, even with my interests. If it’s something I don’t want to do or am not interested in, it’s almost impossible to get me to do it.
I think I’m fairly proactive. I cook for myself, keep the house clean, go to a pub/club/party/dinner at least three nights a week, go the gym or for a run three times a week and try to stay in touch with all of my friends. This year I moved 9000 miles away from home for the hell of it, I’ve always got my eye out looking for alternative jobs to my current career, I take at least a weekend off and go travelling every two months or so and I try to keep up with current affairs.
That said, somedays I struggle to get out of bed, I never have an ironed shirt in advance and I don’t read as many novels as I should. I’ve been meaning to learn a musical instrument for two years now without doing anything about it, and I can’t speak a second language.
I don’t think I’m unlazy, just that I’m devoted to my own happiness–which means I have to get off my arse to make things happen. I would be unhappy if I didn’t achieve things.
It is now time to impart Words of Eternal Wisdom by your host, Shirley Ujest.
These words are meant to releave you from the guilt brought upon by either being passed down from generation to generation like silverware that no one uses but can not bare to part with on Ebay or it is written into their very DNA, which then they are surrounded constantly by people with the opposite kind of DNA, thus making them feel like utterly worthless and lazy.
It’s easier to maintain fat than skinny.
And remember this adage:
Hard work pays off down the road. Laziness pays off now.
I don’t even run for the phone. Run for fun? No freaking way. Not even if I were being chased by bad guys with machetes. really, what are the chances of that happening anyway?
Something is seriously wrong with your friend, Philo. Clearly he doesn’t have tits that have lost the perk and sports bras that go union on him at the first attempt at anything faster than a Grocery Store shuffle. He has too much energy and needs to come over to my house and encounter the drudge work of life and scrub my toilets, fold laundry and feel the hypnotic magnetic pull of the couch subliminally calling his name.
Hope this helps.
You’re using “proactive” in a funny way here. Most people think of “proactive” as anticipating a need and acting rather than responding after that need arises.
So your friend's activities could be seen as proactive if, for example, there were a family history of heart disease or ill-health and he were attempting to ward it off by a healthy lifestyle. But saying he's "the most proactive person I know" is stretching the meaning of the word until it's almost unrecognizable. The word you probably want is just "active". Or "motivated". Or "energetic". Or "insanely annoying".
You may be using the word in the sense of “aware of what’s needed in one’s life and actively steering to achieve those goals”. But even that seems somewhat wrong and more in line with “self-actualized” (ugh), or “ambitious”.