Proactivity

I am a musician and songwriter and my goal is to do it for a living for the rest of my life. I will be doing it for the rest of my life anyway, so why not have it be my sole profession. But over the last few years, I have been waiting for something to happen, thinking that my talent will suffice and that I don't really need to much else for my musical dream life to happen. But nothing was happening. As an artist I have been doing great, writing some very good music, but nothing happened towards my 'career'.

I have spent time frustrated with myself when my career is stalling, even while understanding that it is because of procrastination, yet doing nothing about it. The crazy part is not my lack of progression, for that is completely logical due to the aforementioned lazy attitude. No, the crazy part is that I'm even frustrated or surprised at all when it has been a conscious decision not to get out of a rut of which there is a simple way to get out of.

I am now learning that simple proactivity will significantly change my life for the better. If I want something and I know what I have to do to get it, then I will do it. Almost everything we do that is positive comes from proactivity.

So in June of 2009, I decided to change. I started thinking about joining a band, then that led to starting one myself and now I'm two months in and I've done more for my music career than I have in the last three years. All because I just did it. Something needed to be done, which required many little things to be done, and I did them one by one.

Sitting on our asses is fine, as long as we don't complain that nothing else is happening. We will experience the joy of that activity and nothing more. It's all a choice, so we better be happy with what we've chosen to do.

There isn't many people truly doing what they love without direct proactivity. And it goes for everything in our lives. Relationships form and grow through proactivity towards the formation and growth.

When we are at a restaurant, we know that to get our food, the required effort is telling the waiter what we want. That is small scale proactivity, the amount of work required for the equivalent reward, in this case getting the food. So naturally, something better than a meal would, in most cases, require more work. It sounds obvious, but nothing is handed to me on a platter. I started thinking about the smallest things, day to day things like brushing my teeth, showering (day to every other day....) and then things like trying a new flavour of a food that turns out to be a great decision. All this requires a conscious proactive energy.

I have also struggled in the past, thinking that it is not moral to want something like success, that it is selfish. But as we can give to others, we can give to ourselves. My success does not result in someone's failure. I want to change myself for the better. I am in awe that I have the opportunities that are in my life, so I want to use them as someone in my position should. And proactivity is my key.

- Lee