Hello my fellow bloggers! Today I want to share a very good concept that can make your life better. Overall, there will be 7 posts with 7 habits. All these articles are inspired by the book “The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People” by Stephen Covey. I highly recommend this book for everyone, who doesn’t feel himself happy on a daily basis.
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The first habit is very simple and can be described in a short sentence:
In order to be effective, one must be proactive - Stephen Covey.
Ok, the sentence is short, but what does it mean exactly? In his book Dr. Covey divides all people to proactive and reactive (in fact he doesn’t but I am oversimplifying things here to make this article short).
Proactive people
Proactive people take responsibility for their life. If their life is not as good as they want it to be, they don’t put the blame on economics in place they live, or laws, or their relatives, or global pandemic. Proactive people recognize they should have made some different decision to get a better result.
Reactive people
Reactive people are passive. They always feel that external conditions from the global crisis to as small as bad weather are obstacles they can’t overcome. They feel themselves as victims of this world. They want their life to better, but instead of proactively making it better, they decide to made up more reasons why they can’t improve their life.
To understand this concept better, we need to briefly discuss what types of problem can a person have. All your problems can be divided on 2 large groups:
- Problems within your Circle of Influence These are problems you can solve.
- Problems within your Circle of Concern These are problems to waste time and energy on.
You need to learn how to differ one form the other and focus your energy on important things. Internet made this more important than it ever was. With the information storm, that strikes you every day it’s hard to focus on real issues. Let’s take a look at both circles.
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Circle of influence
This circle is filled with the problems that you can actually affect: work, studies, car family and etc. Your car is broken? You can do something to fix it or buy a new one. You have an important exam in a month? You think about it a lot, it negatively affect your mood daily? You can start studying to prepare yourself. You have problems with your girlfriend/boyfriend? Well, there is usually a way to fix this too. You need to focus on these problems. You can fix them, you can make your life a little bit better.
Circle of Concern
This circle is filled with problems that a way out of your league. You’ve read ten news articles about Israel-Palestine conflict today, but you live in Norway? You keep discussing how bad this conflict is? You’ve made a dozen posts on twitter about it? Congratulations! You’ve wasted your time and energy on the problem you can’t affect. Don’t let all this stuff to spoil your mood. Never waste your time on these problems. If you want to help people, you can actually help them. Knock on the door of an orphanage and ask how can you help.
Circles are not constant!
The last thing I want to bring up is that circles are not constant! You define their size! If you will waste your time and energy on the circle of concern, your circle of influence will become smaller. If you will work on yourself and focus your efforts on the first circle, it will expand. Here is a good example form one of my friends. He was working as a software designer for a small company (around 30-40 employers). The company was experiencing difficulties. It was hard to predict if it will survive or if everyone will lose his job. Most of the employers were struck by it. They blamed their manager. They thought it’s time to search for another job. They were in the bad mood. My friend wanted to fix it. He started studying a new technology, he learnt from experience of similar foreign companies. As the result he suggested a good change in their product. He encouraged others to support him. As a result after 6 month of hard work they launched an updated product that changed everything. Same company with the same employers in the same market conditions became successful.
Disclaimer
I’m not a financial of any kind. I encourage you to check all information yourself and make decision only based on your own opinion. All articles are created for solely entertainment purpose.
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