Last week, I bought “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” for my Kindle and began reading it. When I was younger, I read “Seven Habits of Highly Effective Teens,” but I honestly don’t remember it that well. Off and on through the years, I’ve picked up this book from the library and considered buying it, but never did.

One of my friends told me he attended the seminar and loved it, which reminded me that I’d always intended to read the adult book. I would like to attend the seminar, which is in Vegas in June, but it’s $2,000, and I don’t think my husband would be too happy with me if I asked for that, no matter how supportive he is being through this whole thing…

So I chose the lower cost version first– reading the book.

Today, as I was reading about the first habit during lunch, I was particularly struck by an idea that I’ve always known, but it didn’t really occur to me that I wasn’t living it anymore until now. The first habit is about being proactive and choosing how you are going to react to your circumstances. This is always the way I thought I was living my life, and I think I was doing a pretty good job of it until last fall.

Somehow, at that point, I lost sight of that idea. Life began to throw stronger challenges at me, and instead of sticking to my guns, I let it consume me.

In the book, the author discusses the idea of a paradigm shift, or seeing things from a different point of view. I think at some point last fall (I don’t know how or when), I had a paradigm shift– only this one was not a good one.

Instead of feeling like I had control of many things in my life, I started feeling like *everything* was out of my control. I started blaming other people for what was going on in my life, or I acted like things that were happening were simply things that were out of my control.

The thing is, I used to be a proactive person. And I was still preaching that idea to my friends and family.

I never 100 percent pushed over the edge to complete victim. As a matter of fact, I was still doing quite well at handling myself professionally, taking steps to ensure that I remained in control of my destiny, even if it was a different destiny than I had in mind a few years ago. But, I came quite close in my darkest days to going all the way over.

Today, it was such a relief when I fully realized once more that I can control my reactions. Sure, I can’t control things that are going to happen no matter what, but I can control how I choose to react to it. I can take everything in stride and still remain positive, or I can make it be the worst thing that’s ever happened and let it completely smash my mood.

No one is perfect and proactive all of the time. And I still don’t feel like I’m completely solidified in the idea once again. After all, it’s only really been a few hours since I had my moment of realization.

But I do really feel like I’m finally taking the steps I need to get back on track and get back to the person who believed in herself even when others didn’t.