That experience taught me the supreme importance of imagination over memory. If people live out of their memory, they're bound to the past if they live out of imagination, they create opportunity. Effective executives focus on the future. Imagination is more powerful and significant than memory. This balance between the changing stream and the changeless core is one of the clearest manifestations of the primary habit of effective people be proactive.
Proactive people see opportunities everywhere, and they adapt to the stream.
They have the power to adapt because they're coming from something that does not change. They're very creative in their minds and innovative in their methods. They're not hung up by forms and structures and old modes of thinking and ways of behaving. Reactive people are constantly reading the political pulse, and their social radar is so deeply attuned to what is happening, and they're so responsive to it, that if those forces are in any way adverse or contrary to what they're trying to accomplish, they are quickly and completely filled with the blaming spirit. They compare the past or the way it used to be with what is.