This is the Circle of Influence diagram from Steven Covey’s book, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
When you focus only on things that you can change, you are pushing out your circle of influence. Conversely, when you worry and think about things you cannot change, you end up crippling yourself and shrink your circle of influence.
We’ve all been guilty of worrying about things outside our control. We run the ‘What If’ algorithm through our brain programs for all the unlikely situations and scenarios. We try to come up with all possible edge cases so we can feel ready.
But the mind is a fascinating problem solving instrument. Whatever you focus your thoughts on, your brain works miracles to make it happen. It finds ways to get to the results you are thinking about. This is the proactive focus, expanding what is possible beyond your initial views.
The opposite is true when you focus on things you can’t control – your brain just spins it’s wheels in place and you get fried. Your ability to do anything else is drastically reduced. This is what Covey means on the negative energy reducing your circle of influence.
Be mindful of where you put your focus. Are you using that big brain of yours to expand your world of possibilities? Or are wasting all that mind power getting yourself stuck?