How Understanding Circle of Control Empowers Your Daily Life

This is the intel you need to know from corporate veterans.

Raise your hand if this scenario sounds familiar: It’s Tuesday, and you have already spent 30 hours this week trying to work out a better solution to a decision that you don’t agree with being made. You are just sure that if your boss and peers hear your thoughts, they will understand your rational thought process and choose a completely different path. Wednesday comes, you present to your adoring crowd only to receive blank stares and a few odd questions. Then, for the rest of the week, you expend energy to try to engage, dissect what went wrong, and continue to loop about how you are right. What was high excitement on Monday has turned to stress and frustration for the rest of the week.

 If this feels all too real to you, we hear and acknowledge who you are. Whether it is your domain of expertise or just something you think you can contribute to, the politics of corporate culture or challenging the status quo can be exhausting. We applaud you – your courage and curiosity.

Maybe you find yourself feeling this way regularly, or perhaps it is your first time. We are conditioned to want to be in control. We are told that we can make a change if we work hard at it. The secret no one is telling you is that not everything is in your control. When you make the conscious choice to understand your span of control, it makes all the difference in your happiness levels at work and frees yourself from the burden you are taking on in situations that will not serve your growth.

How to focus on what you can control and a quick reset for your day

When we find ourselves in this position or just feeling off, we revisit the circle of control theory.

1. What I can control.

This circle is all about the aspects you have the power to control – your words, actions, and how you show up.

Think back to the last time you received constructive feedback from your boss. Did you deliver something late or incomplete? That is absolutely within your control. These types of interactions allow you to learn and grow. In this scenario, you have the opportunity to choose how you respond – verbally and nonverbally.

This circle also represents work that you are leading or contributing to for others. Are you working in a collaborative way that takes in multiple viewpoints, or are you choosing to only focus on siloed activities? While not every project is a massive collaboration, the choices you make around gaining feedback while in the process or you can schedule a quick 1:1 to with a co-worker to gain perspective. Your approach shows your boss and peers a level of maturity that encourages new stretch projects in the future.

2. What I can influence, but not control.

This circle represents requests or interactions that you do not own but can influence the outcome.

This could be assisting on a project where you have knowledge no one else can contribute or bringing forward an idea to the correct folks in the organization. Using a synergistic approach, you can help work out a process or share your thoughts on a topic, leading to the creation of change. In this circle, building trust with co-workers, listening to others, and cultivating reliability through consistency is critical. With the number of distractions, shortened attention spans, and competing priorities focus on building solid relationships throughout the organization to assist in your ability to cultivate influence.

3. Things I cannot control.

The last circle represents things you cannot control, and where our stress typically begins.

Often in the moments we don’t feel in control, it is because we are expanding thoughts, feelings, and actions towards something that we cannot control. This could be a decision, a value, or the weather. Change is a part of life, what is essential to realize when something ends up in your circle of things you cannot control, is exactly that, you don’t control it.

Many people find stress, frustration, and unhappiness because we do not accept things or circumstances for what they are. The wisdom comes from knowing that some things cannot change, no matter how hard we try.

Revisiting the first scenario, what we can learn is that by spending time exhausting our energy in an area that we do not control, we may have missed opportunities. Perhaps one to learn and listen to influence, or we may have missed that a decision was final and, therefore, outside of our control. What we can control is how we show up to our co-workers and how we move forward.

Quick Reset

Take a moment and think about the last time you didn’t feel in control. Did you have an opportunity to react differently to the situation? If so, that is learning and something within your control.

The next time you are feeling frustrated, stressed, or not in control, take a step back and locate where this falls on the circle. Reset and think about what you can influence in that instance, and what you can control. Let the rest go.

An excellent example of this is rain. I cannot control the rain. I can influence if someone is scheduling an outdoor event that an alternate option is planned in case of rain. I can control to bring an umbrella. Again, I cannot control the rain.

Our best advice – focus on your words, actions, and how you show up. (And, bring an umbrella!)