Concerns versus influence

Concerns versus influence concept is very simple. You should concern only about things that you can influent.

Lets think a little while about two circles where one contains the other one. We will think about the outer circle as a circle of concerns. This circle will contain all the things in the world that we have concerns about. We will then think about the inner circle as a circle of influence. This circle will contain all the things that we can directly or indirectly influent in any way.

Let us consider two people now where one of them being a proactive person and the other one being a reactive person. Let us explore what this people focus on.

As the proactive person is trying to change things around him he definitely focus on the inner circle that is the circle of influence. He puts the effort there and as he make success his inner circle eventually becomes bigger and bigger. On the other hand we often see the reactive people focus on the outer circle forgetting about stuff in the inner circle at all. Moreover we see that forgetting about the inner circle make the circle smaller and smaller.

As we want to become as proactive as possible we want to focus only on the inner circle with the hope that eventually both circles will become one.