Another important aspect of being proactive invoves expanding your Circle of Influence. Picture two concentric circles. The larger, outer one is your Circle of Concern. It includes all those things you care about. The smaller, inner Circle of Influence includes only those things you can affect directly.
Inside your Circle of Concern might be world hunger, the performance of your favorite sports team or your weight gain. Of those, only one is within the Circle of Influence: weight gain. Even if it doesn't always seem that way, that is something over which you have control. There really isn't much you can do about world hunger, no matter how much you care.
When people focus on things they can't control, they have less time and energy to spend on things they can influence. Consequently their Circle of Influence actually shrinks. If someone spends all day worrying about world hunger, they are not attending to their weight problem.
On the other hand, when people focus on things they can directly influence, they expand their knowledge, experience and results. As a result their Circle of Influence grows.
Here is an example from triathlon: I am swimming in a race, sighting at the beach where the swim will end and I will start the bike. The quicker I can get to the beach, the better. This is, after all, a race. Completing the swim as quickly as possible is clearly within my Circle of Concern at the moment. But, it is not actually within my Circle of Influence. Focusing on the beach, how fast I am swimming, watching those on shore get bigger as I get closer, none of that is going to get me to the beach any faster. In fact, it actually keeps my attention from the things that can lead to a faster swim!
What can I influence directly? My body position in the water, keeping my hand and wrist in line with my forearm, extending my lead arm straight out in front, feeling the "catch" of the water. These are things I can impact. And, if I do these correctly, I can swim faster and get to the beach more quickly. So, what was before only within my Circle of Concern (a faster swim) is now inside my expanded Circle of Influence. Not because I focused on it, but because I focused on what I could influence.
This distinction between Concern and Influence often shows up in our personal relationships. How often have we wasted time and energy wishing someone else would change or actually trying to change their behavior. The truth is that we only have influence over our own behavior. And, if we focus on how we behave, we often find that others change in response and our Circle of Influence expands. Isn't it ironic that the more we try to change others, the less successful we are and that when we focus only upon changing ourselves, the result is that sometimes others change in just the way we hoped?
What are instances where you have expended time and energy focusing on things about which you are concerned, but over which you really don't have direct influence?
What is a situation in which you found that by focusing on that which you could directly control, you expanded your influence with others?
Next time: Habit 2: Begin With the End in Mind.
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