Creators and Reactors

Just as the words “creator” and “reactor” consist of the same letters but in different arrangements, so the difference between happy people and unhappy people is not really about some added or missing secret ingredient. Mentallurgy LifeChange teaches that the real difference between creators, who are generally happier in life, and reactors, who are generally unhappier, is that one takes responsibility for the life he or she wants and the other doesn’t.

Both creators and reactors are faced with the exact same challenge in life, which has to do with what it takes to be effective and successful in the 5 Domains of Spirituality, Health, Relationships, Character, and Lifeplan. (The 5-D Tool in Mentallurgy LifeChange helps you get a sense of your overall life-balance, so you can then focus in on the specific domain(s) where you want to make a change.) Each of these life domains presents you with a set of OBLIGATIONS that must be effectively managed in order to optimize the quality of life in that domain.

When all 5 Domains are optimized and your life is in balance, you are enjoying wellbeing – that holy grail of the human experience.

If you’re not enjoying wellbeing at this moment, we simply have to work the sequence in reverse to find out why. Since wellbeing is a function of overall life-balance; and because overall life-balance is a function of optimization in all five life domains; and because life-domain optimization is the natural outcome of managing your obligations responsibly, then the reason you are not enjoying wellbeing at this moment is very likely centered there.

When your five life domains are optimized, the overall quality of your life (i.e., your wellbeing) can be understood as the synergy of peace (spirituality), vitality (health), love (relationships), virtue (character), and purpose (lifeplan). In the window above, a tree illustrates this synergy in a single image:

Inner peace (roots) nourishes your

vital strength (trunk), which in turn supports

genuine love (branches), which opens out in

positive virtue (leaves), and ultimately produces

a life of creative purpose (fruit).

Wellbeing stands at one pole of a continuum, opposite to an overall very low quality of life called depression. The word depression refers to feeling “pressed down” and stuck in a hole where you lose perspective, feel hopeless, and are tempted to give up.

In fact, Mentallurgy LifeChange teaches that unhappy people find themselves in such a low point of depression because they have given up already.

And this brings us back to those obligations across the 5 Life Domains, to those basic “necessities, requirements, and expectations” (see the window above) that, when managed effectively, optimize the domain in question and contribute to the overall quality of your life.

Take your physical health as an example. You know that there are some basic obligations that you must ‘satisfy’, ‘complete’, ‘accomplish’, and ‘fulfill’ (cf. the window) in order to enjoy a healthy body. Adequate rest, a nutritious diet, aerobic activity, good hygiene, and deep-breathing exercises are among the things that you cannot ‘neglect’, ‘ignore’, ‘avoid’, or ‘put off’ (cf. the window) without suffering the consequences in compromised health (fatigue, dysfunction, illness, disease).

This helps to show that, as we are using the term, an ‘obligation’ is not something that is forced on you, as a heavy burden you must bear.

We could take a tour through all 5 Domains and identify those relatively few things – those investments of attention, action, and effort – that have the effect of elevating your quality of life (if you take care of them) or bringing it down (if you don’t). Where you are on the continuum between wellbeing and depression has everything to do with how you are managing your obligations across the 5 Domains of your life.

When you are taking responsibility for the life you really want, and you are following through consistently with the obligations of wellbeing, then a higher level of life experience opens up to you. The optimal functioning of a life domain provides you with options and possibilities that wouldn’t be available otherwise.

When you are strong and healthy, for instance, you have a lot more choices with regard to what you might physically attempt, experience, and achieve. When you have been neglecting, ignoring, avoiding, and putting off (aka procrastinating on) the basic obligations of physical health, more of your attention, time, and energy will be preoccupied with managing pain and illness.

This higher level of life where you can enjoy more options and possibilities is called OPPORTUNITY, the freedom (and responsibility) to choose the life you really want. As suggested in the window, opportunity and wellbeing are very tightly correlated. An overall high quality of life opens more opportunities to you, and more opportunities serve to enrich the overall quality of your life.

At the other end, we find what happens when you don’t take responsibility for those essential obligations. The downward spin in your quality of life generates a very unproductive effect called URGENCY, a deadly combination of external stress and internal distress that works you up and wears you down – on your way to depression if you’re not careful.

As another example, let’s take one of your important relationships. You have certain obligations in helping to make it function optimally, don’t you? Spending time together, sharing your thoughts and dreams, touching, smiling, and a few other simple investments make all the difference. If you should neglect, ignore, avoid, and put off such investments, what will happen is that your now-dysfunctional relationship demands more of your time, energy, and attention just to keep it from flat-lining.

The urgency of conflict management or of constantly having to seduce your partner back cannot go on for long before it finally breaks down.

In a state of urgency there are no choices, only what has to be done RIGHT NOW, in the final hour and at the last minute, before everything falls into the hole. Some people – and they tend to be the unhappy people mentioned at the beginning – wait for the urgency of their situation to move them to action. They are reactors, even though (ironically) they created the condition of urgency for themselves by refusing to take responsibility in the obligations of wellbeing.

So, which will it be?