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In this rapidly pacing environment, where everything is just quick fixes, it is so easy to get bogged down that you hardly can take time off to self – reflect. It is far easier and convenient to blame people, circumstances rather than taking ownership of our own lives. You don’t need to reach out far to understand this, people close to you, members from your family, colleagues, your relatives, neighbors, everyone is just busy blaming each other.
‘My life is this because xyz happened in my childhood.’, ‘Reason why I am like this is because someone broke my trust.’ ‘my life is so bad because I was born poor, or nobody loves me.’ ‘I can never achieve anything because the economy is down.’ I am angry because he/she said or did this to me.’
Does some of this sound familiar to you?? Is this your story? Is this how your inner chatterbox is ON?
Below is a chart explaining the circle of concern and circle of influence:
Circle of concern is simply whereby we focus our efforts on things which are not in our control. Take an example, I have no control on the rain, no matter what I do when it has to rain it will rain, praying, cursing and even crying won’t do any good. It is just simply not in my control.
On the other hand, proactive people focus on their Circle of influence – the factors that they have control on. Such as my words, behavior and action. I don’t have any control on the rain, however I can have an umbrella anytime and protect myself from the heavy rainfall.
I will share with you a story from my life. Once I gifted one of my colleagues my precious beautiful Turkish coaster. When I handed her over, she didn’t say anything. She glanced at it from the front, then from the back and glided it away from her hand on the table completely ignoring and depicting a rude behavior. I had two options, either to confront her of this odd behavior of hers or change my response by ignoring her actions and focus on my self. You see we have no control over others action, what we do have is control over our response to it.
Reactive people focus their efforts in the circle of concern. They will put in all their effort in finding weaknesses of other people, the problems in the environment and will have increased feeling of victimization.
It is the successful people who are proactive, who deal with what is in their control and put in all their effort in their circle of influence. The results? They have an extraordinary life just by simply taking ownership of their life!
Remember you can carry your own weather with you always. 🙂
