Proactive people focus their efforts on the Circle of Influence. They work on things they can do something about.

If you have never read The 7 Habits of HIghly Effective People, you might be asking yourself just what the heck is the Circle of Influence and Circle of Concern?

Valid question!

In a previous article, I talked about developing the habit of proactivity. Please, feel free to check it out if you like!

To expand on the habit of proactivity, we can look at the Circle of Influence and Concern.

Another way to become more self-aware regarding our own degree of proactivity is to look at where we focus our time and energy.

Circle of Concern

We each have a wide range of concerns:

• Health
• Children
• Work
• Spouse
• Nuclear war, etc.

We create a Circle of Concern in order to separate those things in which we have no particular mental or emotional involvement.

As we look at those things within our Circle of Concern (pictured above), it becomes apparent that there are some things that we have no control over and others that we can do something about.

We identify those concerns (ones that we can do something about) by confining them within a smaller Circle of Influence, as shown below.

By determining which of these two circles actually takes up most of our time and focus, we can discover a lot about our degree of proactivity.

How do you use the circle of influence?

Proactive people focus their efforts on the Circle of Influence. They work on things they can do something about.

The nature of their energy is positive, enlarging, and magnifying, causing their Circle of Influence to increase.

Reactive people, on the other hand, focus their efforts on the Circle of Concern. They focus on the weakness of other people, the problems in the environment, and circumstances over which they have no control.

Their focus is blazing and accusing attitudes, reactive language, and increased feelings of victimization.

The negative energy generated by that focus, combined with neglect in areas they could do something about, causes their Circle of Influence to shrink.

Real-Life Example of Shrinking Circle of Influence

This scenario is actually playing out in my life right now. It’s pretty personal but illustrates how a reactive person can very easily shrink their Circle of Influence and not give a flying fuck. 

The person in question is my ex bother-in-law.

Here’s the situation:

My mom and I had planned a dinner for my 18-year-old niece (brother-in-law’s daughter). It was Gotcha Day and every year we plan a dinner for her.

My sister (her mom) passed away last year and it was my niece’s first Gotcha Day without her.

We went ahead and planned a dinner and whatnot for her and my nephew. They were going to get picked up from school and come to the house.

Well, that day (Gotcha Day) my mom received a scathing text from my ex-brother-in-law saying how we were trying to ruin Gotcha Day for him and had the last 12 years not been enough. 

A little background: My niece and nephew and sister lived with my parents after they got divorced and my niece and nephew just moved in with their dad after my sister passed away.

My mom chose not to respond to the text. 

In no way, shape, or form had my ex-brother-in-law expressed any plans to my mom that he was doing something special for my niece.

After not responding to the text, my ex-brother-in-law sent another one to my mom (who please keep in mind has essentially helped raise my niece and nephew their whole lives and took on a significant mother role after my sister got sick) saying that he was thankful for her cooperation (sarcasm).

My niece did not have a clue that her dad was planning anything. He did not tell her, he did not tell my mom, and the only person who knew about these said plans was him.

He also let my niece know how disappointed he was that she was spending gotcha day with her Nana and all her other family members with which she was raised!

Even as the days went on, he never got over it and continued to send my mom and niece (his daughter!) horrible texts. My poor niece has to live with him and your damn sure he didn’t let her forget how much she hurt him.

In this scenario, my ex-brother-in-law chose to grow his Circle of Concern by focusing on being reactive instead of proactive.

In my opinion, a simple solution would have been to let either my niece or my mom know that he had something planned so we could plan around it. 

He assumed that we were being malicious and just horrible people keeping his daughter from him on Gotcha Day. 

He has never once planned anything for her on Gotcha Day and has never expressed any interest in doing so. Therefore, we had no reason to believe that he had anything planned this year. 

We, on the other hand, plan something every year for my niece and did not see a reason to stop this year.

A little bit of communication with a proactive attitude could have turned this situation around or even eliminated it entirely.

My ex-brother-in-law chose to concentrate all his efforts on our actions (things he can’t control) instead of his words and actions, which are things he can actually control. 

By doing this, he was effectively increasing his Circle of Concern while decreasing his Circle of Influence.

This is the opposite of proactivity.

Reactive Focus

As long as we are working in our Circle of Concern, we empower the things within it to control us. We aren’t taking the proactive initiative to effect positive change.

Direct, Indirect, and No Control

The problems we face fall into one of three areas: 

1. Direct Control: problems involving our own behaviour
2. Indirect control: problems involving other people’s behaviour
3. No Control: problems we can do nothing about, such as our past or situational realities

The proactive approach puts the first step in the solution of all three kinds of problems within our present Circle of Influence.

Direct Control Problems

Problems are solved by working on our habits. They are obviously within our Circle of Influence.

These are the private victories of Habits 1,2, and 3 in The 7 Habits.

Solutions may include:

• Setting goals driven by principles and working towards them.
• Choosing to be proactive and less reactive.
• Developing a personal mission statement and using it to help guide your decisions in life.

These are all things under YOUR control.

 Indirect Control Problems

Problems that are solved by changing our methods of influence.

These are the Public Victories of Habits 4,5, and 6 of The 7 Habits.

You can learn new methods of influence if your present ones are not serving you correctly. 

Most people have only three or four of these methods in their repertoire, starting usually with reasoning, and if that doesn’t work, moving to flight or fight.

Fear not, it is very possible to learn new methods of human interaction, instead of constantly trying to use old ineffective methods to ‘shape up’ someone else.

An example would be using empathy to try and understand someone else’s point of view rather than being confrontational and only accepting your own point of view as the only correct way to see things.

No Control Problems

Problems involve taking the responsibility to change a frown into a smile to genuinely and peacefully accept these problems and learn to live with them, even though we don’t like them.

This way, we do not empower these problems to control us.

This is how we chose to handle my ex-brother-in-law. We can’t change his point of view, so we accept that he’s just going to keep at it but we will continue to go about our day and not stew about him since we can’t control what’s going on in that head of his.

How do I grow my circle of influence?

Realizing that you can expand your Circle of Influence is quite inspiring. You can choose your response to circumstance and by doing so you powerfully affect your circumstance.

You grow your Circle of Influence by working on the one thing that you have control over – yourself.

In the example with my brother-in-law, I’m working at communicating more effectively with him and being more understanding from his point of view.

Whether or not this helps is another question, but I know that I am doing all I can to positively affect this situation. He can choose how he reacts and whether he responds in kind.

The positive way I can influence this situation is to work on myself, so that’s what I am doing.

Summary

There are a lot of ways to work on and grow your Circle of Influence. You can work at being a better listener, a more loving marriage partner, a better student, a more cooperative and dedicated employee.

According to Stephen Covey in The 7 Habits, 

“Sometimes the most proactive thing we can do is to be happy, just to genuinely smile. Happiness, like unhappiness, is a proactive choice.”

There are things that we can’t control, like the weather, that will never be included in our Circle of Influence but as proactive people, we can carry our own physical or social weather with us.

We can be happy and accept those things that at present we can’t control, while we focus our efforts on the things we can.

And Remember: Keep going, keep going, keep going…