Top of the mornin’ to ya! This is Brian at LifeChampion.coach.
For the last few weeks we’ve been talking about the circles of life. Its a Venn diagram of three circles. We’ve got a circle of awareness, the circle of concern, and the circle of influence. We spent one week introducing kind of the Venn diagram and then one week on the circle of concern, or no awareness, one week on the circle of concern, and this week we’re going to talk about the circle of influence –that’s funny, it’s around like my head — The circle of influence is what do we effect? What do we have in our control in our life that we can have an effect on that we can make change on that we influence whether intentionally or unintentionally.
The circle of influence sits up here. Part of it overlaps with the Circle of Awareness. Part of it overlaps with the circle of concern and a little part of it overlaps with both. The scary thing about the circle of influence is most of it up here, isn’t in our area of awareness or area of concern. And that’s when we have influence in that space that we can cause amazing things to happen that are good. And we can cause amazing things to happen that are bad.
When we. When I look at my life as a parent as an adult as a child growing up there’s lots of times where people, and events and activities have been influenced by me that I wasn’t aware of or concerned about. One of my favorite quotes from when I was a camp counselor. Is that “they’re watching you when you don’t know they are.” And that helps manage that space up here that’s not in my inflew–my awareness or my concern. But is in my influence.
So if I take what I’m concerned about and I’m concerned about what I don’t know about. What’s not in my area of awareness and it’s in my area of concern and that can be concerned about that I expand my area of concern. And sometimes we just have to be concerned about things that are outside of our awareness. I need to be concerned that the campers at camp are watching me, and seeing me, and observing things that I don’t plan or intend for them to see and plan. And that just changes my character. Or does it? Maybe that matches my character that I have that awareness that I am unaware of some things that I influence and model that character to account for that.
The same thing applies as a parent. The same thing applies as a member of an organization, of a group, of a team. Everyone is watching us when we don’t know they are. And the funny thing is they may not be watching us as much as we think because they’re so focused on watching themselves and how they appear and what they’re…how they come across.
As we look at how the circle of influence interacts with the other two circles. There’s a lot of things up in this top part of the circle that we’re not aware of that we’re concerned about. By expanding our area of concern more into that circle we have a bigger impact on the world. When we expand that area of awareness into that area of influence we can make that concern and create that positive impact in that space.
And the more we can overlap those three circles and bring them together the more impact the more improvement the more change we can institute in our life, our family, our church, our community.
So, thanks for going along on this ride with me on the three circles of life. In fact on my morning run, I’m thinking of a fourth circle to maybe bring up coming down the road.
So Top of the Mornin’ to ya! Be blessed.
Parent Article: Awareness of Your Circles
