The Circle Of Influence And Worry

Make a list of the things that worry you most and decide if they are in your
circle of *influence* or *worry*. Think about what you can really do to have
an influence on each of them in an effective way. By determining which of
these two circles is the centre around which most of your time and energy
revolves, you can discover a great deal about your level of positivity.
Positive people focus on the things they can do something about. If
necessary, they change their attitude. They are aware that perhaps they
cannot change the circumstances but they can improve their inner attitude.
This is what positive focusing is all about: being creative, thinking
differently, being open to listening, being more understanding, more
communicative and showing more solidarity. Reactive people focus on the
problems of the circle and on the circumstances about which they have no
control. They react to the defects found in other people. From this
worrying, accusations, destructive criticism, feelings of blame, a reactive
language and feelings of weakness and frustration can arise. They want
others or the circumstances to change first and when that happens, then they
will change. Whenever they think that the problem is on the outside, this
thought is the problem. The negative energy produced as a result of this
approach, combined with the lack of attention to the areas in which they
could do something to improve the situation, means that the area of
influence decreases in size. They give power to what is external so that it
dominates them. In other words they think that change must come from
"outside towards the inside"; they think that something that is outside must
change before they themselves change.