5 Proactive vs Reactive

Shawna:   0:01
Welcome to the less stress family podcast where we believe you are valuable and what you do matters

Justin:   0:11
this episode five  

Shawna:   0:15
I am Shawna  

Justin:   0:15
I am Justin. How are you, honey?

Shawna:   0:17
I am great. How are you today?

Justin:   0:18
Good. Feeling better? Yes. You look great. Thank you. Feeling much? Much better? Yes. I'm excited.

Shawna:   0:25
I know you are. You have been wanting to discuss this. So our topic today is being proactive versus reactive.

Justin:   0:32
Yes. This is for me, a huge. It's almost my first question. I asked myself when I'm in a situation. I'm starting to feel stressed when I asked myself, Maybe have I've been proactive about this or my reacting. Um, that's really big for me.

Shawna:   0:50
Yes, I'd say probably out of the different tools that we have. Probably after being thankful and having my gratitude that this is probably be the second most important to him.  

Justin:   1:00
Maybe. Yeah, because it sets you up

Shawna:   1:02
reducing your stress.

Justin:   1:03
Yeah, I agree with that

Shawna:   1:05
because it's another internal tool,

Justin:   1:07
right? Exactly. Yeah, that's well said. Good. So what do we mean by proactive? Let's define our terms and reactive. What do you think? What does that mean to you?

Shawna:   1:16
Okay, So tell me we didn't

Justin:   1:18
talk about this, but

Shawna:   1:19
me being proactive means thinking ahead and making conscious choices versus just letting life happen. And I'm responding to it.

Justin:   1:29
Yeah, totally. So for me when I'm proactive, it's not that I have all the answers or that I've trained for all the answers. All right. It's not that I am ready for every situation, but at least I have a plan and I'm moving in a direction. Reactive for me is total stress bomb because I'm only responding to other people's or other things in my life, right? What? You have to respond. So it's it's but living that lifestyle when I'm only responding and not being thinking on my own. Yes, from a big deal?

Shawna:   2:04
Yes, which makes me think of a story.

Justin:   2:06
Okay? Yeah, Please tell.

Justin:   2:08
So we were foster parents for about five or six years, and we had only teenage girls. And, you know, nobody gets into foster care because they've had a great life. And so these were people. Who were

Justin:   2:21
you talking about? The foster parents or the foster kids?

Shawna:   2:24
are hard choices to be foster parents, but for foster Children, like they have been dealt a very hard hand in life. And so some other choices are not fantastic, but they're just operating out of that broken this. But the story that came to mind was we had actually been reading through some different parenting books. So Love and Logic will probably do a whole episode on it. Fantastic parenting material. But the idea is that you allow the child to experience the consequences of whatever choices they make, like you honor that they made that choice, and so you're gonna allow them to experience that consequence. So we had been reading this book as a proactive step. Like we know we're now parenting teenagers, not just our biological Children who were only toddlers and preschoolers at the time.

Justin:   3:15
And because we felt completely overwhelmed, like, you know what I mean? Like, sometimes you don't get proactive until you're like, Oh, I can wing this. And then at some point, you know, I feel like, oh, crap, I can't. I need help. And we were like, Whoa, we're over our heads. We don't know what we're doing right, that kind of place.

Shawna:   3:33
So we were speaking. It's nice that you need help and you start seeking those,

Justin:   3:37
right? That's proactive, I think. Setting them the way.

Shawna:   3:40
So we had all that disclosure stories. Thanks, honey. Um, we had started. We had read this book on specifically parenting teenagers, and it gave all of these different scenarios and examples. And so

Justin:   3:54
would you do if?

Shawna:   3:55
What would you do if you know, like your kid continuously forgets their homework and is always calling from school? What would you do if you know your kids not doing their chores? How are you gonna handle that? Real life situations

Justin:   4:09
from, like, simple to like. What do you do when the police come to your door or right? Your child is pregnant or, you know, those kind of

Shawna:   4:15
Exactly. Exactly, um and so we had talked through. Not only that, we read it, but we had discussed it as a couple, you know? What do you think about this? What? You know, how would you handle the situation? And so we had gone through all kinds of different scenarios. Fast forward. One day, I'm shopping. Actually, I don't think I had any little people with me that day, which was a blessing. But I did have our two foster daughters with us with me. And so they were shopping in one part of Wal Mart. Like looking at hair dye or whatever, while I was doing grocery shopping. And so then I'm in the checkout lane with a huge buggy of food because we just had lots of mouths to feed, even at that point. And I heard my name on the overhead speaker

Justin:   5:04
before that, the Lord basically told you had the thought beforehand.

Shawna:   5:08
Yes. Yeah. The Holy Spirit had kind of given me, like, the heads up that. What would I do today if, um, our foster daughter stole something and I was like, I felt bad that I even had that thought. I was condemning myself. Like, why would I even have that thought? I need to have more belief in them anyway. So then I'm in line and I'm checking out this huge buggy of groceries. My name's on the overhead. You know, Jonah would please come to the service counter, and I just start singing praise songs like, you know, really quietly in my head (because you're a sick person). Because I was like, You know what? I think it's game on, but we've already discussed how we would handle this situation. So I'm just going to stay in a really positive, high energy place for myself anyway. Long story short wins and went to the service counter and was told to go to the security office, went to the security office and there they were and they had both been caught shoplifting. And we had discussed that we would honor their choice and they decided to do that. And so what that means is that I said, Well, this is what they want to do. Then let's let them experience those consequences. Even though they were minors, I could have just said Okay, I'll take him from here, and the police would have handed him to me, but I didn't. And so they went and they got to be booked and they got to be fingerprinted, and they got to experience all of that at the police station. And the police officer had actually even pulled me aside like Listen, we're understaffed and like, if you could just deal with this situation and I had told him I was like, I need you to let them experience this, and I will drop off my groceries and I'll come right over like I won't leave him there very long. But they need to understand what this feels like. So anyway, so long. Story short. That's what I did. They didn't speak to me. The girls didn't speak to me for days because they were so ticked off

Justin:   7:07
and we were crushed (we cried, we cried) but we trying to share but me, like we weren't We were not like, Oh, good. They got in trouble. We were devastated. Remember feeling just completely. You know,

Justin:   7:22
I

Justin:   7:22
felt complete failure.

Shawna:   7:23
Actually, the store manager gave me a hug when I shut the door. I was, like, crying. And she said they said you would be really upset. Um, so anyway, but what was a super stressful situation was not as stressful because we had already decided this is how we're gonna handle the situation room. So I wasn't trying to think when I had high emotions, it had already been decided. Yes. So that's what that's, you know, kind of a dramatic example. But any time, um, we can plan for an event before it happens, that's going to decrease your stress level when you're actually walking through that event,

Justin:   8:02
right? So the problem of reactive life reactive living is that basically everyone else is responsible for you, and a lot of times you don't take responsibility for yourself. Do you think that's pretty accurate?

Shawna:   8:16
I think that's fair. I feel like it's a reactive lifestyle is like kissing cousins with entitlement because it's I'm not gonna take responsibility to create a plan or take action. I'm just gonna let things happen, and I'm just going to blame a lot of other people and expect them to figure out the solution

Justin:   8:35
right, which I think like a lot of social media in our society, is very reactive to everything. Yes, save the president or the senators or fill in the blank. Those people are the problem. And if they didn't have this, you know, if the if the whoever wasn't there, the president or whoever, the senator wasn't there as the problem, someone else would still be the problem with the reactive worldview. You know what I mean?

Shawna:   8:59
Right? And the problem with the reactive worldview and with entitlement and with irresponsibility is that it actually increases someone's internal stress because they are choosing not to have any control. They're choosing that everyone else should be in control of the situation, which for human to have to feel no control in a situation is extremely stressful.

Justin:   9:25
Yes, I've been there many times. Were you, You know, whether I didn't plan for it or whatever. So the solution to being not reactive is to be proactive,

Shawna:   9:35
right? And so the steps for that is basically, it starts out with deciding once you want. And after you figure out what it is that you want, then you're going to, you know, figure out what are some steps that will take you in that general direction

Justin:   9:52
and what we say we want. We're not talking like the big, floaty things out in the sky that you're vision. You know, we're not talking about those, like life vision. Although you should be doing something like that. We'll talk about that another right? We're talking about, like, what do you want your day to look like tomorrow? Tomorrow morning when you wake up in the morning. If you know you've been having trouble running late or the kids an issue start to build a plan toe work toward that solution, right? Right. That's what we talked about when you want. Like we're doing real practical like What do you want? Well, I like a $1,000,000. No, I mean, you know, that's great. You should feel that way.

Shawna:   10:28
Put that on your vision board. That's not what we're talking about today.

Justin:   10:31
We're doing what you want is when I wake up in the morning. What should What are the problems? What are the bottlenecks that I face that I have been reacting to? That calls me stress, right? And you'll be amazed once you start implementing the small changes which we're talking about, I think next up in the morning routines,

Shawna:   10:48
Right, Right, right. Absolutely So thinking about things that, like I'm going to take a step to move in this direction over the next 90 days. So small chunks. So an example might be, you know, there was a phase in my life where I did not wake up until the first, like a toddler with peanut butter, breath was face to face with me. Like while I'm trying to sleep, not open my eyes and have that like, Ooh, here's a child like Mommy. I need this And that was a stressful way.

Justin:   11:15
That's a rough way to wake up

Shawna:   11:17
so I wanted to wake up before my Children. So just little steps that I could take so that I was not having that like like that moment every day,

Justin:   11:27
which we found. You mean there's morning routines? And there's also a queue up for next few episodes when evening routines, Right? Because if you can just get in those routines as best you can

Shawna:   11:37
Oh my goodness, it is huge!!

Justin:   11:38
about proactive, you feel like champion of the world. 

Shawna:   11:41
Yeah, really? Absolutely. So keep listening because we've got morning routines and evening routines coming up in the next several podcasts. But to wrap up, you know, just asking yourself, even the base question of Am I really doing things in a proactive way? Or am I just reacting, particularly in areas that are causing you stress right now?

Justin:   12:03
That's I think that's the best way smoke and fire you say. Where's the smoke of stress? And it lead you to the fire of some problem you've not really thought about or its not working. What you thought would work is not work, so not working. So it's time to change and change gears. Yes, we d'oh, you have to do a lot of changing gears.

Shawna:   12:22
Oh, yeah. Like life is constantly changing. So you have to constantly be changing too. Thank you so much for taking time to tune in and hang out with us. Remember, you are valuable. And what you do really does matter. You are also not alone. Connect with us and the rest of the less stress family community on Facebook to search for less stress, family podcast or on Instagram, you can search for our personal accounts. Fine. Is Shauna Cherie would Justin Great. Until next time, Have a blessed day.

Justin:   12:53
Thank you.