Exploring The Circles Of Control

As an important energy accounting practice to avoid burning ourselves out, it is important to consider where we might best spend our limited energy budget day to day. This circles of control concept invites you to simplify the process of considering what is in your control, influence, or neither.

It also poses you the question; is this necessary right now?

Transcript

Hello, And welcome to this space. I'm David Gray Hammond, And I'm a mindfulness teacher who specializes in supporting neurodivergent body minds. And today I would like to talk about a principle that I live my life by that is embedded in much of the work I do with neurodivergent people. And it's the concept of circles of control. Now before we discuss this, You may find that this challenges you on a deeper level. So for this moment I would like you to stop. Stop what you're doing and just for a moment be present. Feel the temperature of the air, Feel the pressure of your feet against the ground. Maybe take a breath in through your nose and then gently out through your mouth. If you're stimming, That's fine. If you're fidgeting, That's okay. You're allowed to move your body if it aids in you engaging with meditative practice. But now we will discuss the circles of control. In principle, The circles of control teach us what is within our control and what is not. But I don't believe it goes far enough, So I will introduce a bit more to it as we go through it. Now imagine ourselves in the center of three rings. When you're in the innermost circle, That is the things that you can control and you can influence in your life. They are the things that you can directly control and that your influence is important on them. There may be a number of things in this inner circle, But there may also be things that we think are in this circle that actually do not belong there. And so we have the next ring out. This ring is the things we don't have control over, But we do have some level of influence over. Again, While there are many things that belong in this ring, Often we internalize things in a way that we place decisions or actions too deeply into the three rings when they belong further out. So it's always important to be mindful of whether you truly have control or influence over something. And then the outermost ring is things you have neither control nor influence over. These are the things that are beyond your power horizon, That are beyond your reach. I want you to consider for a moment where you should be investing your energy as a person, As a neurodivergent person. Now if you spend your limited energy trying to influence the things in the outermost ring, You are engaging in a practice of futility and burning yourself out when there was nothing you could do about it and most likely internalizing negative ideas about yourself in the process. The next ring in, The things we can influence. Often we mistake them for things we can control. Again, When we find that they're not doing the things that we want them to do, When they're not going in the directions we planned for, We internalize that and tell ourselves it's because we failed. When the truth is we had invested energy in something that we did not have the level of control over that we believed we did. So it's important to consider, Do you only have influence rather than control? And what is the most resourceful way of using that influence so that you don't burn yourself out? Because it's likely to be an important thing you're trying to influence. But if you burn yourself out, You are no good to any of these tasks. But then you have your innermost circle. These are the things that you can control and influence. And this is where your energy budget should really be spent because these are the things that are important, The day-to-day, And they are not done in futility. So make sure that you spend a good portion of your energy budget dealing with these things, But also be mindful of the things that sneak into this inner circle that don't belong there, Because so often we tell ourselves we have control over things when truly we don't. And that's okay. But I want to add an additional concept to this, Because it's all well and good knowing what we have control and influence over. But what we really have to consider is, Is this course of action necessary? So yes, You might have control and influence over something, But is it necessary to exert that control and influence right now? Is that a good use of your energy budget or should you be focusing on something else? And the same goes for the influence circle the next ring out just because you have influence over something does not mean that you should be spending your energy budget on things that are unnecessary to influence. And regardless of whether things are necessary in the outermost ring. They're out of power and control and influence. And so it's important that we focus on the things in that outer ring as a community, As a group, Because that's where we regain some of that power and influence. And so I hope you can consider these words and explore the concept more easily. As an exercise, I would invite you to make a diagram of the three rings and write down what you believe is truly within your control, Your influence, Or not in your control and influence at all. And then once you've done that, Decide what is necessary right now. I hope you've learned something from this today and I look forward to seeing more of you in the next guidance. Take care. Have a peaceful day and goodbye.