Taking The Initiative: How To Make Things Happen

Taking the initiative is taking the first step towards making a date with the ones you like, but also breaking the patterns and starting your own projects. In other words, it’s about being proactive and activating that social skill that combines enthusiasm, intuition, creativity, willingness to anticipate things and get out of any difficulty.

Who wouldn’t want to have all these features? In fact, he was never told that “what is he lacking is initiative?” So, almost without realizing it, that word becomes a yearning, an impulse that we want to integrate into our personality and behavior to make things happen.

Virtue, social skill, leadership skills, etc. We can define this dimension in several ways, but what is always evident is one aspect: there are those who have and those who don’t. When we lack initiative, the reason usually lies in personal insecurity as well as fear. We’re afraid of failing, we’re afraid of being in the spotlight, of exposing ourselves, and of others discovering that we’re fallible.

However, one thing is certain: there is no difference between staying where we are and failing. We are still in the same place, in the same territory, where nothing happens, where we do not advance socially, emotionally or professionally. So, if we want reality to be better and if we want to achieve what we have in our minds and hearts, we need to take the initiative.

Keys to taking the initiative and achieving your goals

At some point in life, we experience this feeling: wanting to do something and not knowing how to do it, or simply not daring. Ask your boss for a pay raise, tell someone you like him, make a change in your life, start a new phase… Taking the initiative requires something more than courage.

Above all, it means being willing and having a plan of action. Because beyond what we can believe, the person with initiative doesn’t improvise, he plans. Something like this, no doubt, requires a proper adjustment of cognitive, emotional and behavioral processes. Today, we are going to learn about a series of strategies that will allow us to learn to take initiative.

Emotions in tune with the goals

There are emotions that disturb and do not make life easier. Taking the initiative usually causes two very specific emotions to surface: fear and shame. We are afraid of failing and exposing ourselves. These will be our worst enemies and as such must be deactivated and reoriented.

In what way? Establishing a dialogue with us to remember what we deserve. It should be clear that fear and shame cripple us as a person, erase our potential, and distort our identity. Instead, there is an exceptional emotion that always facilitates the initiative: enthusiasm.

Plan, Observe, Seize the Opportunity

Taking the initiative is not synonymous with jumping into the pool at the count of three. Sometimes the pool can be empty and we can make a mistake we might have predicted.

• Taking initiative means taking the context into account, predicting the future, looking at the situation from different angles and making a plan.
• Avoid leaving everything to chance. To get what we want, luck can accompany us, but always keep in mind that luck is created by ourselves with effort, work and originality.

To take the initiative, call on allies and mentors who can help you

When it comes to creating the present and shaping the future we desire, the responsibility in each process is ours. However, this does not mean that we cannot rely on the help and advice of an expert. Certainly, there is someone around you who can help you.

Also, you can count on someone who has been through the same situation and can advise you.  Keep an open mind, listen to opinions, consider other perspectives to make the right decision combining all possible data.

Prepare the way: every big victory starts with small battles won every day

People with initiative don’t improvise and don’t risk everything at the same time. In other words, if I like a person, I can’t tell them what I feel without thinking about the consequences. The work to win someone part of the daily seduction; we have to earn your affection little by little.

The same is true in any context. I can’t ask my boss for a raise if I haven’t shown my value first. Nor can I make a radical change in my life if I don’t close some doors and open others. The key is to go little by little and inject charisma and intelligence into each situation, showing in each context what we are worth and what we are.

There will be times when we need to step back. That’s good, because that way we’ll learn something we didn’t know, find new options, and see everything with more perspective to gain momentum.

In essence, taking the initiative is not just having courage: it is knowing how to plan, be patient and manage our emotions well so that they fill us with courage and enthusiasm. In this skill or psychological competence, it is no use acting on impulses, it is necessary to act with reflexivity and intelligence.

We can all train ourselves to take more initiative and thus achieve our goals and create the life we ​​want to live.