There is a vitality, a life-force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost.
—Martha Graham
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When you drive across the vast expanse of the Mojave Desert in eastern California, your mind has lots of time to wander. As I was making my way back home to New Mexico on one road trip, the word “reaction” kept popping up in my mind as I was driving through that vast stretch of sand and sagebrush.  I had no idea why.

Mulling this over, I realized that the word creation has exactly the same letters as reaction. I was fascinated by this. Soon I realized that creativity and reactivity were anagrams, and so were creative and reactive. Truth be told, I got a little whacko over this discovery… perhaps it was the almost-stoned effect of looking through the car windshield and staring at blue sky and brown earth for hours on end.

The more I thought about this word play, the more I saw it as an extraordinary life lesson. I thought about how often I come from a place of reaction. I passively move along in my life and wait to see what other people want or need from me, or what a situation may compel me to do. Then I do it.

It’s almost like I fall into a trance. I hear a need and I react. By doing so, I often divert myself from my own passions. Instead of asking myself, “What do I love to do and how can it benefit these people,” the default question that pops up for me is, “What do these people need and what do I have to do to help them meet that need?”

Creativity and Reactivity are two very different energies. The first infuses me with the vitality that Martha Graham so beautifully describes; the second drains me. It’s not that it’s bad to meet others’ needs–in fact, there are times when that’s quite important–but if that is all I do, experience has taught me that I’ll end up feeling quite exhausted.

For example: someone recently asked me to edit an article they wrote. The article didn’t speak to me or inspire me. In my reactive trance, I would say “yes,” either because I think I need the money or they need my help (or both).

In contrast, if I’ve given myself more space and permission to consider what really nourishes me, I’ll stop and take some time to consider my response to this request. If it’s a project that I feel will truly inspire me as well as benefit the other person, I might say yes. If that’s questionable, I am learning to say no. And in the process, I may discover that what’s most important is to invest my time and energy in writing an article that I’ve been putting off for a while.

When I was honest with myself, I realized that I come from reactivity about 75% of the time and from creativity about 25% of the time.

During that long desert drive, I made a vow to myself to begin shifting the ratio from reactivity to creativity in my life. I’m still working on it, but I believe the shift started at that very moment when I started to become aware of that pattern.

Here are three practices that are helping me to support this shift:

• Catch myself before I automatically say “yes” to a request. At the very least, I can tell someone that I need time to think about what they’re asking of me. Now I’m practicing responding like this: “That sounds like an interesting opportunity and if I said yes to it, I’d want to make sure I could give it my full attention and energy. Please let me think about it and I’ll get back to you in a few days.”

• In the time I’ve just given to myself to think the request through, ask myself why I would say yes to this. What will be the “return on investment,” not only financially (if that’s relevant), but in the form of inspiration? Is my intuition is that fulfilling this request would be more draining than inspiring? Those are big clues that can inform how I respond.

• Along with my “to do” list, now I’ve also got a “don’t do” list. This idea comes from a great article by Peter Bregman in the Harvard Business Review. When I get bogged down in a reactive cycle, I easily fall prey to activities like wasting too much time on Facebook and checking my email every few minutes. My “don’t do” list keeps me on guard about these things so I can switch gears and make more positive, creative choices about how I spend my time.

How about you? What’s your creative/reactive ratio? How can you liberate yourself from the trance of reaction?

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