INTL

Find a Therapist (City or Postcode)

Thomas S Bateman D.B.A.

Getting Proactive

Chasing Important Goals?

Self-Regulation
Outsmarts Willpower
Proaction is your key executive function.
Posted June 26, 2019

Achieving your most essential goals requires far more than

persistence, time, and an action plan that will get you there. It
also requires effective self-regulation—a crucial yet often
overlooked psychological and behavioral process.

Self-regulation is your executive-in-charge.

The ability to self-regulate your actions along the paths to‐

ward achieving your goals comes mainly from the executive
system of the brain. Specific executive functions include
memory, attention control (an element of willpower), emo‐
tional control, and generating new behaviors.

That last category is perhaps less widely known than

willpower and the others, but it is a fertile arena, harboring a
tremendous potential for making needed changes as people
pursue desired futures. It deserves more attention than it usu‐
ally gets, because it helps us set new goals, devise the best
We use cookies to enhance your website experience. More Info OK
 INTL

Source: Graphic: Dick Close

strategies and tactics for achieving them, and make smart ad‐
justments along the way.

Proaction is the engine of self-regulation.

To be proactive is to personally choose your actions instead

of deferring to situational demands and constraints, to think
hard about current paths and possible outcomes, and to
change course to create better futures. Sometimes proaction
causes immediate impact, but positive results usually come
only after more extended periods of strategic self-regulation.
Willpower helps, but also essential are thoughtful course cor‐

We use cookies to enhance your website experience. More Info OK

rections in response to criticism, resistance, setbacks, and
INTL
plateaus.

Proaction works better than our default tendencies.

Our jobs, careers, and lives unavoidably include both prob‐

lems and opportunities. No matter which one confronts us,
we can respond passively or actively.

Faced with a problem, we can passively ignore it, wish it

would go away, or hope someone else tackles it. If we
choose instead to take the initiative and enact substantive
solutions, then we achieve progress and growth. Fixing long-
standing problems or nipping new ones in the bud erases
part of the past and creates better futures.

Opportunities present similar options: passively ignore them,

make an effort but abandon it when the going gets tough, or
pursue them hard en route to success. Like solving problems,
capturing opportunities creates better futures.

Deciding to be proactive transcends circumstances and per‐

ceived personal limitations. It generates new options when
none are immediately recognized. Feeling inept and frus‐
trated by setbacks and stalled projects becomes a rarity
when the mindset is: “There must be better ways, we just
need to work smarter,” rather than “I have no choice… We’re
stuck… this is impossible… I/we will never get there."

You have more upsides and options than you know.

Imagine that you set your sights on a remarkable achieve‐

ment in a sport or your job or career. You will need to depart
from the status quo and your current trajectory and start
working on your new aspiration. What goals should you set,
anduse
We what changes
cookies will you
to enhance yourneed toexperience.
website make? Through your self-
More Info OK
regulating executive function, you transition from (relatively)
INTL
mindless routines and business-as-usual to more strategic, fu‐
ture-changing pursuits. The specifics depend on your project,
of course. But big-picture goals and transitions always per‐
tain, and they appear in the figure at the top of this piece.

Because you’ll have to think and act in new ways, the figure
has a vertical element showing important thinking goals and
a horizontal component showing essential “doing” goals. The
figure’s forward lean conveys movement toward your ulti‐
mate objectives. You are proactive when you consciously and
decidedly move from one thinking or acting phase to the
next.

An essential goal in self-regulation is to change how one

thinks. When confronted with new challenges, you are being
proactive when you transition from thoughtless System 1 pro‐
cessing into more thoughtful System 2 processing, especially
when faced with unique circumstances and challenges. What
worked in the past won’t necessarily work now, and you need
to think deliberatively about what to do differently.

To use more System 2 thinking generally, or to apply System

2 thinking now, is a proactive goal. So is moving from deliber‐
ative but conventional System 2 thinking, with all its error-
prone biases and imperfections, to acquiring new skills in crit‐
ical thinking. Take the unusual step to engage in meta­cogni‐
tion—to think strategically about one's thinking. You can de‐
cide to not just deliberate, but deliberate well, profoundly,
and with consummate wisdom plus practicality.

Transitioning in the figure from the vertical to the horizontal—

moving from thinking to doing—a considerable gap exists be‐
tween having good ideas or plans in your head and taking
your first concrete actions in the new direction. Psychologists
We use cookies to enhance your website experience. More Info OK
call this "crossing the Rubicon." Executing this task is not a
INTL
matter of wishing, hoping, or thinking “maybe someday I’ll
give it a try,” but of making a conscious decision to act: “I will
do this specific thing when I encounter these particular cir‐
cumstances and opportunities.”

The first action step is crucial, but of course, it’s still not
enough. Over time, further transitions shown in the figure in‐
clude: 1) moving beyond the first steps to the subsequent ac‐
tions needed to make further progress, and 2) moving from
improvement to a sustained effort plus flexibility—the latter is
required for making strategic and tactical changes, plus al‐
lowing room for pursuing your other important goals.

Upward and Onward

In 1961, President Kennedy famously announced a space ex‐

ploration program that would put a man on the moon. Early in
the Apollo 13 movie, astronaut Jim Lovell (played by Tom
Hanks) and his wife (played by Kathleen Quinlan) gazed at a
beautiful moon on which they had just seen Neil Armstrong
walk. Lovell said simply, “It’s not a miracle, Marilyn. We just
decided to go.”

The Apollo accomplishments required much more than an

idea, a plan, and stick-to-it-iveness. The real driver was al‐
most a decade of gritty self-regulation by countless individu‐
als and teams. While your professional and personal goals
might not be as wild as a moon or Mars mission, your thinking
and doing options and self-regulation requirements are no
different.

So when you reach obstacles—for instance, the psychologi‐

cal canyon between thinking and doing, when you need to
transition from the vertical to the horizontal—let the Apollo
We use cookies to enhance your website experience. More Info OK
program inspire you. Decide to go, and then identify and at‐
INTL
tack every step necessary to make it really happen.

About the Author

Thomas Bateman, D.B.A., studies and

teaches organizational behavior and
leadership as a Bank of America Eminent
Scholar at the McIntire School of Commerce,
University of Virginia.

Online: Visit Faculty Page, Twitter

Read Next

3 Steps to Avoid Bad Decisions and Relationship

Problems

We use cookies to enhance your website experience. More Info OK

 INTL

Why Proactivity Is the Superpower You Can and Should

Develop

Most Popular

The First Three Instincts of Masculinity

Are Zoomies a Sign of a Happy Dog or a Crazy Dog?

5 Ways a Fear of Abandonment Shows Up in

Relationships

3 Steps to Avoid Bad Decisions and Relationship

Problems

5 Spiritual Practices That Increase Well-Being

The Real Thing to Look for in a Friend or Partner

We use cookies to enhance your website experience. More Info OK

 INTL

Find a Therapist
Get the help you need from a therapist near you–a FREE service
from Psychology Today.

City or Postcode

Countries:

Australia New Zealand

Austria Singapore
Belgium South Africa
Canada Sweden
Denmark Switzerland
Hong Kong United Kingdom
Ireland United States

Are you a Therapist? Get Listed Today

We use cookies to enhance your website experience. More Info OK

 INTL

Subscribe Today

About Editorial Process Privacy Terms Accessibility

International

Psychology Today © 2023 Sussex Publishers, LLC

We use cookies to enhance your website experience. More Info OK