Personal Leadership and Skills

Leave Your Reactive Life Behind

Change the outcomes in your life

Don’t you love a simple, genuinely life-changing concept that is easy to understand? Let’s look at one such idea: moving from being reactive and responsive to becoming creative and generative. Can you imagine what such a shift in your life can create? The possibilities are limitless!

The concept

This concept comes from one of my favorite authors, Robert Fritz. If you want to learn how to create, he is the ultimate authority on creating. Many well-known authors cite his work.

Among the books he has written, two of my favorites are The Path of Least Resistance and Your Life as Art. Each is well written and easy to read. Fritz describes two fundamental life orientations in these books: creative/generative and reactive/responsive. Let’s look at each and how you can use them to change your life significantly.

Reactive/Responsive orientation

In the reactive and responsive orientation, you are subject to the circumstances of life. When you react, you often behave like a victim. Why is this? Because circumstances drive your reactions since they are the dominant force in your life.

Circumstances also drive responses. You may think responding is better than reacting, and you are correct. However, many responses come from how you have been conditioned in life by circumstances. In other words, they are simply a different form of reacting. Being reactive or responsive creates little or nothing new in life.

Think about the medical profession and its patients. For many illnesses, the doctor is in a reactive/responsive orientation. Suppose the patient has a condition such as diabetes or high cholesterol. The doctor will prescribe medicine to treat the problem/symptom in either case. The underlying cause is either not addressed, lightly addressed, or ignored by the doctor and the patient. Using such a problem-solving approach does nothing to eliminate the problem or create something new.

Surely the medical profession’s countless intelligent people could figure out something that works better than just putting a bandaid on a serious illness? Unfortunately, as is true for so many professions, the problem-solving mentality is just another form of reacting or responding. It only leads to temporarily alleviating the issue while often creating other problems.

“Creating is no problem — problem-solving is not creating.” Robert Fritz (1943-present)

Creative/Generative orientation

The creating and generative orientation transcends circumstances. In this orientation, you live and create what you want, independent of circumstances. Creating is the dominant force in your life. When faced with a problem, you move beyond merely solving it to creating something entirely new.

When providing your customer with a fix for a problem, the focus is on what is wrong (the negative). You may become an expert at finding and temporarily fixing the symptom or problem. But imagine creating something new that renders the problem non-existent.

“You cannot create what you want by moving away from what you don’t want.” Robert Fritz (1943-present)

For example, Thomas Edison could have improved lighting by fixing existing problems with candles, oil lamps, gas lights, etc. Instead, he used the creation of an entirely new light source (the light bulb), the powerplant, and the entire wiring infrastructure that eliminated the need for previous light sources.

Then there is the horse and buggy. Some of the early automobile pioneers were in the horse-drawn carriage business. They could have continued improving their horse buggy products. Yet a small number of them created a solution to replace the horse-drawn carriage altogether — the automobile.

The same happened with papyrus, pen and ink on paper, typewriters and paper, computers and paper, to completely digital, paperless products. Each creation went beyond fixing a problem and created something new.

Lastly, think of what Amazon has done. It has created an entirely new system, moving hundreds of billions of dollars of products from brick and mortar stores to large distribution centers, delivering identical products to your door at a lower cost!

There is no limit on the amount of innovation possible. Creating leads to innovation, and innovation leads to creating.

The opportunities to create are plentiful if you can effectively take on a creative/generative orientation in your life.

What could you create today?

Shifting from reacting to creating

Following are a few things you can work on to shift from the reactive/responsive orientation (r/r) to the creative/generative (c/g) orientation. The first part of each statement is in the r/r orientation; the second part is in the c/g orientation.

• Stop blaming others (r/r) and start accepting responsibility (g/g).
• Just because that is how it has always been done (r/r) doesn’t mean you can’t eliminate it (whatever it is) and find another way to do it (c/g).
• Instead of using typical problem-solving techniques (r/r), create something entirely new that replaces or eliminates the problem (c/g).
• Don’t give up or give in (r/r), but find another way to go around it, over it, under it, through it, or eliminate it and create something new (c/g).

As an example, how can you apply the first statement above to your work or life? Say you are always blaming someone or something for letting you down. Instead of blaming them, take responsibility for creating something new that completely eradicates the issue. It may involve firing someone, finding another source, making whatever it is in-house, or other creative ideas. Anything is better than continuing to blame, isn’t it?

Another example is when digital photography came on the scene. Most professional photographers stuck to film because it was better than digital at the time. Today, however, practically every photographer has gone digital. Why? Because digital photography did not try to “fix” the many problems with film photography. Instead, digital photography created an entirely new medium, eliminating the need for film.

The most important thing to learn is recognizing when you have a reactive/responsive situation and imagining a way to turn it into an opportunity to create or generate something new.

What ideas come to mind that you can begin using this c/g orientation in your life? What is something that has you stuck in the r/r orientation that you can change by creating something new today?

Final thoughts

Give thought to applying the creative/generative orientation to your work and life. Join the few who learn to create what they want instead of repeatedly doing the same old thing.

By creating, you control the outcomes rather than merely plodding through life in a reactive/responsive orientation. Imagine The fruit that will result from living a creator’s life.

Become a creator and live the life you want!

“Dreamers only dream, but creators bring their dreams into reality.” Robert Fritz (1943-present)

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Bill Abbate Leadership Writer and Editor in ILLUMINATION

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