What Can You Control?
Life can present many challenges and for some can feel very fast paced. These difficulties that arise can allow a person to feel stressed or overwhelmed. Do you feel like that you have control over your life or is life controlling you? Some of my coaching clients feel at times that they have lost complete control over their life. It might feel like you have no control over anything in your life and the truth is you do have control even in the worst of times. When this does arise in a coaching session, I introduce the Circle of Concern and Influence concept. Stephen Covey’s book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People explains three circles which are concern, control and influence. It explains what we can and can’t control.
1) Circle of Concern
Most people worry and focus on situations that are out of their control. This can be an anticipated outcome that may or may not happen. Thinking of something that may go wrong or might not work out. It might even be the weather or someone else’s opinion. Worrying about things that are out of our control is a waste of energy and mentally draining. These worries on our mind are usually based on past experiences and conditioning. Unfortunately, the mind is designed to keep us safe and protect us. We create our own fears and worries. No one else does. We do have a choice to control our own fears and worries instead of letting them control us. Accepting and acknowledging what we can’t control and letting go will allow us to focus our energy and time on what we can control.
2) Circle of Influence
This is where we can influence our concerns with the actions we take, how we communicate and behave despite not having direct control. When dealing with people we can express our point of view and needs in persuading them to do what we want and for this to happen they will need them to agree with us for any change to occur.
In the end people will make their own choices and all we can do is put forward our perspective if they will do what we want or not. To increase our chances of influencing them we can develop a good relationship and trust with the other person.
To influence an event for example running a marathon under three hours, we can’t control the outcome that the marathon will be completed under three hours but to influence this outcome we can train, choose how we diet and prepare as best we can for it. The same could be for giving a presentation, we don’t know if the audience will like the presentation and to influence how they might like it is to build rapport and connection with them, practice the presentation in advance and have material content that is relevant to the audience.
3) Circle of Control
This is where you have control over your own response, decision making, attitude and behaviour. You have control over your own choices and where you put your attention to. While we can’t control our own thoughts or external factors, we can choose to respond how we are feeling and not allow triggers to influence us. We can control our focus and motivation in how we go about working towards a goal and following the process.
Whenever you find yourself in a situation that is causing you to feel anxious or uneasy. Ask yourself: ‘What I am focusing on right now, is it in my control or not? If it is in your control, choose how you will respond. If is out of your control, choose to let go and move on from this worry.
An exercise that may help you to identify what is in your control or not is to write out a list what is in your control and not. The triggers behind your worries and the response you will choose to address these worries. By having awareness and understanding how you feel will allow you to adapt to situations that you have control over.
