Thursday, October 02, 2008

Dealing with people

"You cannot control the way in which people around you behave, but what you can control is your reaction to it."
[Definitely stated by someone before me :)]

There are two ways in which you can deal with people, the reactive and the proactive way.

At one extreme, domineering people tend to be proactive in their dealings, they don't usually take any form of feedback and deal with people and situations in a manner that they deem best.

At the other extreme are highly oppressed people who behave in the most obsequious way; being completely reactive in their way of dealing with people and situations.

I feel most "balanced" people fit in a zone between these two extremes. The obvious question that comes to my mind is where do i fit in?

After a lot of introspection i have come to a conclusion on the position that i would like to take in my life. 

While dealing with the people i care about - my family, my friends - i would like to have a higher fraction of reactive responses than proactive resposes ... i want to listen to them, react to what they have to say, or feel, get proactive only when required. This is an extremely difficult objective to achieve (been trying it for a few weeks ...it is quite a daunting task to achieve the ideal that i have stated). I like to believe that i have a large amount of patience when i deal with people and situations, but now i realize that i have to have a lot more patience than what i believe i have had. There has to be an inner calm, a tranquil place that exists within my psyche that enables this kind of an approach.

At a professional level i want to have a balanced approach, a one is to one split between the reactive and proactive responses. Alongside the inner tranquility for my calm reactive nature i need to have a raging inferno for a fiery proactive response. This will serve me well in the long run provided i use the right combination of responses in my professional dealings. I might need to be a reactive inferno at times and at times be a calm proactive element!

It is not easy to be "balanced" in this sense, yet i have to work hard to achieve the right blend in my response to the situations and people that life throws at me!

1 comment:

shamitbagchi said...

There is no single right way, only appropriate responses which vary from situation to situation. However, yes as you say it is true that a personality gets built over time based on the trends that you could decipher from the way a person behaves... And maybe that can be guided by making a chnage happen. Good Post.