Today's lesson in our family "Character Camp" was to "Be Proactive"--to assume that YOU are responsible for your life. The opposite way of living, to be "reactive" is to react to your changing circumstances with no faith that you can make choices about your reactions that will give you control of your life. Being "proactive" leads to steering the course of your life. Being "reactive" leads to drifting wherever circumstances and your habitual reactions take you, even if they take you over the edge of a cliff.
When you are "proactive", you know you are steering the course. You know you are responsible for where you go. When you are "reactive", you fail to recognize that the steering wheel of how you choose to respond to life is right there in front of you. You don't see your power. You surrender power and control to circumstances and habitual reactions. And then you blame others for everything good and, especially, everything bad that happens to you.
We don't expect "Character Camp" to instantly turn our two boys into "Masters and Commanders" of their destinies, habitually recognizing their power to get the best out of any situation through the choices that they make. In fact, WE (the parents) don't always remember to be proactive. But we do expect to come out of "Character Camp" with a common family understanding and language to describe a way to live effectively. Two months from now, if one of our kids comes home from school and says, "I can't learn anything in Miss Simpson's class. Nobody can! Everybody hates her!", we can remind him, "Are you being proactive or reactive about Miss Simpson? Remember what we learned in Character Camp? What options do you have to take control of this situation?"
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