The Circle of Control
The Circle of Control and the Circle of No Control — you may not know about them but experience them daily. Think about all the things that you CAN control every day in your life and all the things that you CANNOT control. What does it all boil down to?
The Circle of Control is all about the ID, the EGO and YOUR personality, attitude and reactions to life. You CAN control your urges once you have learned how to, and you can control your reactions to the Id of other people around you. You need to use and train your Ego to do this! The id is the crux of your base instincts, the ego is the conscious self-awareness, the reasoning part of the personality.
Saul Mcleod writes about Freud’s Theory of Personality (Simple Psychology). He notes, "The id is the impulsive (and unconscious) part of our psyche that responds directly and immediately to basic urges, needs, and desires. The personality of the newborn child is all id, and only later does it develop an ego and super-ego…The id is not affected by reality, logic, or the everyday world, as it operates within the unconscious part of the mind.”
Mcleod adds, “The ego is the only part of the conscious personality. It’s what the person is aware of when they think about themselves and what they usually try to project toward others…The ego develops to mediate between the unrealistic id and the real external world. It is the decision-making component of personality. Ideally, the ego works by reason, whereas the id is chaotic and unreasonable.”
The Circle of No Control is about the external world, the greater environment and the people who share that space with you. You cannot control the weather, climate change, the price of petrol, where you were born, your family, your skin colour and your history. You cannot control what others think about you, say about you and say to you. All you can do is control your reactions to these things, your opinions, views and judgements!
I found a lovely description of the circles of control in the famous book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teenagers, written by Sean Covey in 1999. His father, Stephen Covey, wrote The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People 10 years before this! They suggest that adults and teens can manipulate their destinies using just 7 good habits. And they need to take into consideration the Circles of Control and learn how to manage and accept these. I think that these circles are part of life itself.
Meanwhile, many people have attested to the messages in these books and ongoing reviews reveal that CEOs, teachers and parents benefited from their pages in more ways than one.
These are the 7 habits, now adapted for teens:
Habit 1: Be Proactive
Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind
Habit 3: Put First Things First
Habit 4: Think Win/Win
Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood
Habit 6: Synergise
Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw
In this blog, I am going to zone in on the circle of control, and the circle of NO control as described in the book. There are things we CAN control in our lives and things we CANNOT control in our lives.
We can choose our behaviour in life and our outlooks on life: angry, sad, judgemental, all-knowing, loving, kind or fierce. We can choose to hold grudges and resent people or we can choose to let it all go and forgive people. We can hold onto the past, or we can move into the present with joy, refreshed and renewed.
We can choose to acknowledge the things around us that are bigger than us in terms of being uncontrollable — the wars in the world, climate change, the weather, the colour of our skin, our parents, where we were born, who won the World Cup and rude comments. We can acknowledge that these things exist and that we are part of them and we can try to take small steps to be better people sharing a planet with millions of other living beings.
What do YOU think? I would like to draw on this wonderful blog by Carl Phillips on his Frictionless Living Website. In Zone of Control, Carl hits the nail on the head:
Truth be told, there are a small amount of things that are under our direct control.
In our gift to control:
- Our effort
- Our mindset
- Our words
- Our actions
- Where we focus our attention
- Whether we are grateful for all we have
- What, and who, we give power to
- What people we let into our life
- What we ingest (food, drink, information, ideas)
- What exercise and self-care techniques we implement
- Whether we are compassionate (with others, with the natural world, with ourselves)
- Our expectations
What we cannot control:
- The future
- The past
- Outcomes and results
- How other people react/behave
- Whether other people care (as much as we do)
- What action, or non-action, people take
- The weather
- If we get that promotion
- Whether we win the lottery
Most of our suffering comes from:
a) not taking enough ownership of what we can control
and
b) trying to control those things we cannot.
We invest our energy in spaces that ultimately will not serve us.
But, we can flip this.
We can choose to focus ourselves in areas that will serve us. We can invest ourselves fully.
We can choose to be compassionate with ourselves and others.
We can let go of expectations and flow with life instead.
We can move with an easy grace.
We can learn to tap the stillness inside.
We can empower ourselves.
We can flow.
Read all you can about the circle of control!
Then read The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and give The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teenagers to your kids to read.
