Who/what has the biggest influence on your life?
There are a number of factors that influence your life. Things like our family and friends, education, social system or country you live in etc. We could go on and on in describing what is shaping you and your world. Still, one key factor would be missing, which is…. yourself!
It is your approach, goals and daily decisions that create your reality. There is a number of limitation you face while doing that. Still, it will not change the fact that you are, who you choose to be. This is true regardless if you are aware of that or not.
Having that perspective, let’s take a look at how you can be proactive in shaping your reality.
Circles of Control
Below graphic presents 3 areas of your life. In the center are things that you entirely control and you can made sole decisions on (i.e. how we spend our free time etc.). The second circle shows the area you can influence, but cannot decide on yourselves. It can represent decisions made by others that you can influence one way or another. Last, gray circle shows area over which you have no control what so ever. Those can be for instance laws, regulations or economic limitations.
Look at different challenges you are currently facing in your daily life. Try to categories them into those three areas. Try to avoid gray areas and do not assign anything in between of those categories. Now think where you spend the majority of your time in tackling those challenges – actual actions you take. Similarly look where you focus your thoughts including both concerns and potential opportunities.
Get right focus!
As in all situations, there is no silver bullet approach. You need to consider what works best for you. Still, there are some general rules that are worth considering. Let’s look at all three, above discussed areas:
1. ‘Your control’ area – that should be an area of your main focus because you can control outcomes of your actions/decisions. You should be investing here the majority of your time and effort. It may represent things like upskilling yourself, spending your money appropriately, choosing right job etc.
2. ‘Your influence’ area – nowadays cooperation with others is key, both in daily life and in a business environment. Thus this circle may be most important one. Make sure you build solid relations with your key stakeholder. If you cannot control the situation, find a person who can and try to use your influence. If you do it well, you will move the challenge you were facing into ‘your control’ area.
3. ‘No control’ area – very important to remember: as you cannot control or even influence challenges from this bucket, you should not even attempt to! Once you realize that you have no control over something, stop investing your time end efforts into it. All you need to do is accept that things are outside of you reach and there is no point in concerning about it. Instead, focus on challenges that are either in ‘your control’ or ‘influence’ circles.
Using above approach should result in decreasing ‘no control’ area in favor of two remaining circles. Go ahead and think where you invest your time and how can you focus on right areas. Once you really do spend the majority of your time in inner circles, you’ll see what true proactivity feels like.
Thanks!
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Tom