59and planning. “Creation” and “reaction” have the same
letters in them, exactly; they are anagrams. (Perhaps
that’s why people slip so easily out of one and into the
other.)
Many of us can spend whole days reacting without
being aware of it. We wake up reacting to news on the
clock radio. Then we react to feelings in our body. Then
we start reacting to our spouses or our children. Soon
we get in the car and react to traffic, honking the horn
and using sign language. Then, at work, we see an e-mail
on our computer screen and react to that. We react to
stupid customers and insensitive bosses who are intrud-
ing on our day. During a break, we react to a waitress
at lunch.
This habit of reacting can go on all day, every day.
We become goalies in the hockey game of life, with pucks
flying at us incessantly.
It’s time to play another position. It’s time to fly
across the ice with the puck on our own stick ready to
shoot at another goal.
Robert Fritz, who has written some of the most pro-
found and useful books on the differences between cre-
ating and reacting, says, “When your life itself becomes
the subject matter of the creative process, a very differ-
ent experience of life opens to you—one in which you
are involved with life at its very essence.”
Plan your day the way Bill Walsh planned his foot-
ball games. See the tasks ahead as plays you’re going to
run. You’ll feel involved in your life at its very essence,
because you’ll be encouraging the world to respond to
you.If you don’t choose to do that, the life you get won’t
be an accident. As an old Jewish folk saying puts it, “A
person who does not make a choice makes a choice.”
Run your own plays