Session 3:
How Much Is Your Time Worth
The Circles of Concern and Influence
The Circles of Concern and Influence A good way to become more self-aware and discover where all your energy is going is by looking at your Circle of Concern and your Circle of Influence. In our world today there are many things we are concerned about, such as our families, health and safety, problems at work, financial problems, and war. Your Circle of Concern contains the concerns for which you have mental or emotional involvement, while the outside contains all the things for which you have no emotional or mental involvement.
Take a few moments to think about the things in your Circle of Concern and write them down.
As you write them down, you will notice that there are some concerns over which we have control and others over which we have no control at all. To create our Circle of Influence is to separate the things over which we have control from the things we don't have control over.
Now take some time to consider which of your concerns you have control over and put them in the Circle of Influence provided above, and then put the concerns you have no control over into the Circle of Concern outside the Circle of Influence.
Now think about where most of your energy is used. Are you spending your time and energy trying to change the things you have no control over? Are you spending your time working on the things you can change?
People who concentrate on the things in their Circle of Influence are called Proactive. They are considered to run on a positive energy, and therefore are able to increase their Circle of Influence. People who concentrate on the things still remaining in their Circle of Concern are called Reactive. Reactive people focus on the weakness of others rather than working on their own weaknesses, and spend their energy trying to change things over which they have no control. This creates a negative energy and therefore decreases their Circle of Influence.
(Positive energy increases the Circle of Influences) |
(Negative energy decreases the Circle of Influences) |
Our concerns and problems can further be categorized into three groups:
- Direct control
Direct control problems are those involving our own behaviour.
- Indirect control
Indirect control problems are those involving other people's behaviour.
- No control
No control problems are those that we can do nothing about, like our past.
In becoming a proactive person, and therefore increasing your Circle of Influence, the first step is by working on the direct control problems. That is working on our own behaviour and improving our habits. Getting our own lives together before we try to tackle others.
Taken from: "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" by Stephen R. Covey