How To Empower Yourself When Problems Arise.

Many years ago, I used to know this friend who was very intelligent and knowledgeable. As a matter of fact, I used to go to him for personal advice often. However, there were two things about him that many people (including me, eventually) did not like about him. The first was his personality: While, overall, he’s very friendly and outgoing, there were times when he can be very opinionated. He always felt he was right and usually discredited other people’s opinions. Perhaps related to this was his tendency to blame and criticize others. When something doesn’t go the way he wants, it’s usually this person’s fault or that person’s fault, and at one time, I believe he actually tried to blame society! Later on, when his health worsened to the point that he was unable to hold any job (at least according to him), he would blame his inability to earn a living and support himself on his various medical conditions. He would ask various people for help until eventually, he alienated most of his friends. I tried to help him as much as I could but, eventually I, too tried to see less of him. Since then, I haven’t seen or heard from him since. My friend’s problem of blaming others when things go wrong isn’t unique, as many people have this problem. At one time, I used to have this problem too. Even now, I have to remind myself to not only accept responsibility for the unfortunate things that happen in my life, but to also focus on finding on being finding solutions. But for most people, they feel that by blaming other their boss, their coworkers, the government or their pets for their problems (yes, believe it or not people actually blame their poor dogs or cats for misfortunes), that would somehow relieve them of the problem at hand. Unfortunately, the problem does not go away. It’s just been “assigned”. By assigning the problem to someone else, it’s up to them to do something about it, which usually doesn’t happen (as a matter of fact, if these people are anything like that person who assigned the problem to them, then they would just reassign it to someone else). If anything at all, it disempowers that person. In Stephen Covey’s book, “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, he talks about the Circle of Concern and the Circle of Influence. The Circle of Concern are things beyond your control, such as family tragedy, the economy or the behavior of other people. The Circle of Influence, on the other hand, are things within your control (even though you may not believe them to be). These include your attitude and your response to a certain situation. Successful people and high achievers always work within their Circle of Influence. Hence, they always feel empowered because they are working within things that are within their control. Unsuccessful people, on the other hand, are working within the Circle of Concern, always focusing on things they have no control over. Hence, for these people, the problem rarely, if ever, goes away. It’s unfortunate, but it seems many self-help books put too much emphasis on topics such as thinking positive, believing in yourself and chasing your dreams and not enough emphasis on what to do when problems arise, which often do, especially when you have big goals or, in the case of a workplace, when you’re working on a huge project. The secret to handling difficulties is to acknowledge the problem, take responsibility, work towards finding solutions and then take action. All these are within your Circle of Influence.