What Is Reactivity (And Why It Might Not Be Good for You)
In business, of course, it's a quality. Everyone wants it, at every level.
In essence, reactivity is the ability to analyze and respond to a situation that falls outside the original plan. When a plan you've drawn up clearly isn't working anymore ("is it normal for the basement to flood like this?"), you have to be able to set aside outdated solutions ("so we don't turn the power back on?") and start taking action better suited to the actual problem ("maybe we should tell the kids to come upstairs?").
So if you're asked in a job interview: yes, you're reactive. Totally.
In Eastern philosophy, it's a more mixed quality. Becoming less reactive is even a measure of progress: a Buddhist who isn't proud of how they behaved will say "I was reactive" or "I was caught up in reactivity."
In this context, reactivity means acting immediately on your thoughts and emotions. No buffer, no pause, no chance for them to change.
For the sages, thoughts and emotions are transient. Like everything in this world, mental contents appear, run their course, then disappear. Wisdom lies in watching this dance without getting trapped by every passing mood.
Because often, they tell us, we give our thoughts too much credit. We assume every idea is the mental representation of an underlying reality; that every emotion stirring inside is the result of something happening outside; that there's a one-to-one match between the physical world and our picture of it. Seen that way, it's essential to act right away, since thoughts are reality – or are, at the very least, its faithful ambassadors.
Except that a minimum of introspection quickly undermines this idea.
When you don't artificially keep them going, you have to admit that thoughts... pass. Emotions pass. Everything passes. And usually quite independently of the reality you thought they were tied to.
In fact, the same reality can look very different over the course of a day: worrying in the morning, of no concern at noon, more motivating in the evening. Three perceptions of the same thing. But to witness this change (what Buddhists call impermanence, or anitya), you have to avoid rushing into action in the morning. By jumping straight into action, by being reactive, you don't give yourself the chance to see that first emotion fade and give way to the next, then the next, and so on, revealing the essentially fleeting nature of our mental contents.
This matters all the more because, as Acharya Prashant writes in Advait in Everyday Life (don't judge it by its cover, this book is a gold mine): the seed and the fruit of action are one.
In other words: action taken in anger only brings more anger. A business built on fear only leads to more fear. The emotion at the root of an action is the one you find at its outcome, whether the project succeeds or not.
Think about it: do you know many millionaires who quit business after their first big win? Politicians who don't want more power once they've landed their first office? Mobsters who give up violence once their first rivals are out of the way? Far from neutralizing it, action validates and feeds the original emotion.
That's why action is rarely the right way to handle your emotions.
Changing the outside world won't end this sadness. Accepting or turning down this offer won't neutralize this anxiety. Verbal or physical violence won't stop this anger. On the contrary, action is likely to make worse the very negative emotions and troubling thoughts it was meant to end.
So what do you do? This is both the paradox and the solution: there's nothing to do. If you don't artificially feed them with an urge to act, thoughts arise and vanish on their own, with nothing required on your part. Because, as the saying goes:
"Whatever has the nature to arise will also pass away."
Buddha
So: when I'm worried, sad, or anxious, I deal with the emotion first – by doing nothing – and only then do I act. But often, by that point, action is no longer needed. Which leaves me time to write all these crappy articles.