Taking Back Control

When life seems to spiral out of control, it’s often a sign that we’re focussing too much on what is out of our control and not enough on what is still under our control.

In his book, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey tells us to imagine our lives as two concentric circles. The inner circle is our circle of control.

This is everything in our world that we have direct influence over—our thoughts, values, choices, existing relationships, and resources.

The space between the inner and outer circle is our circle of concern. These are the things we care about, but which we have no or very little control over—the choices and opinions of others, unforeseeable events, big world events, and the problems and systems all around us.

If we focus most of our energy on these things (that are out of our control), our circle of influence begins to shrink, until we are surrounded by even more things that concern us, but that remains beyond our control.

But if we focus on what we do actually have control over (our circle of influence), we’ll not only feel more in control, but slowly and surely, we start to influence more of the things that concern us.

In a nutshell: taking back control in your life begins and ends with you discerning what is and is not in your control.

It’s the prayer of serenity, really: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”

Each one of us needs the wisdom to discern what is in our control and what is beyond our control. A good exercise to do is to actually draw these two circles on a piece of paper.

In the middle circle, write down the specific parts of your life that are in your control.

Then, in the area between this middle circle and the outside of the bigger circle, write down the things that concern you but that are beyond your direct control.

Here is an example of these circles:

Understanding what really is in each of your circles is vitally important.

It is the difference between taking healthy responsibility for our lives or feeling crushed by the overwhelming weight of the world’s problems. On the other hand, if we push things that really are in our control into the outer circle, we disempower ourselves, and will only ever feel like victims.

Once we identify what is in our control, we can begin to focus more of our energy there. Although this will look different for each of us, for all of us, it will involve hard work, making tough choices, sticking with them when nobody’s watching or applauding, and taking real responsibility for our lives.

As Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “In the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves… and the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.”