Proactive people focus their efforts in the circle of…

Page 83. Proactive people focus their efforts in the circle of influence. They work on the things they can do something about. The nature of their energy is positive, enlarging and magnifying, causing their circle of influence to increase. Reactive people on the other hand focus our efforts in the circle of concern they focus on the weaknesses of other people and problems in the environment and circumstances over which they have no control. Their focus result in blaming and accusing attitudes, reactive language, and increased feelings of victimization.

— from Friends, Community & Society (Relationships/Community/Society) · 7 habits highly effective families Stephen covey

In the book

This is also where you graduate from being a good person to being a good citizen. In any complex modern society it is not enough merely to be a good neighbor and an honest individual; we each have to go further and take responsibility for the wider whole. It also means working, as the effective do, within your circle of influence — putting your energy into the things you can actually affect rather than the vast things you cannot. It means accountability, which is the bedrock of any well-functioning society, and it means the courage to speak up when you see something wrong that can be corrected — not to fear doing so, because certain people have an obligation to society to be that voice, and you are now one of them. — Friends, Community & Society (Relationships/Community/Society)

The most effective people I know keep not just a to-do list but a to-DON'T list — an inventory of what diverts them, to be avoided — and they treat focus as something that can be trained, until they can hold their attention even amid distraction. And spend your focus where it can actually do something: the proactive put their energy into their circle of influence — the things they can affect — while the reactive pour theirs into the circle of concern, the vast territory they cannot touch, and end up only anxious and blaming. Guard it the way you guard money, because time spends the same way: an hour poured into the trivial is an hour stolen from something that mattered. […] Decide, then act now. A good plan executed today beats a perfect plan next week; act without hesitating. Protect your focus and forethought. Automate the small choices, spend your energy in your circle of influence, and choose with forethought, judgment, and values. Use simple sorting labels. Run incoming demands through quick buckets — critical, necessary, desirable, out — so the trivial never crowds out the vital; and weigh a choice partly by whether it helps you avoid future frictions down the road. — Decisions & Choices (Decision/Choice/Focus/Forethought/Consequences)

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