proactive coping
a stress-management strategy that reflects efforts to build up resources that facilitate promotion toward challenging goals and personal growth. Proactive individuals are motivated to meet challenges, and they commit themselves to their own high standards. They see demands and opportunities in the distant future and initiate a constructive path of action toward meeting them. Stress is interpreted as eustress—that is, productive arousal and vital energy—and coping thus becomes goal management instead of risk management. In contrast to the other three types of coping proposed by German psychologists Ralf Schwarzer (1943– ) and Nina Knoll, proactive coping does not arise from any negative appraisals, such as harm, loss, or threat. See also anticipatory coping; preventive coping; reactive coping.