The Real Estate Investor Radio Show: The Circle of Influence vs. The Circle of Concern

Focus on What you Control

I want to build on something we talked about in detail with Natalie Pilkinton yesterday, and that is getting away from worry and focusing on what you control—proactive versus reactive or your circle of influence versus your circle of concern. And if you want to really master this, you’ve got to read The Seven Habits Of Highly Effective People by Dr. Stephen Covey. But what most people—when I’m out, I very seldom hear people—I just had an epiphany.

You know why people don’t talk about their circle of concern—circle of influence? Because they’re responsible. I just realized that. Let me go back to what I was about to say. Circle of concern is outside—you have concentric circles. Draw one circle say the size of a quarter, write in that circle of influence. That’s what you control. Make a larger circle around it, maybe a half inch bigger all the way around, that’s your circle of concern.

And see, when you go out — man oh man, you’ve got to listen to this. You are not going to want to believe that this is this simple, but I just had an epiphany that I can tell you why people are failing. It’s because they never talk about stuff they have control of. When I go out and I sit down with people over beers or I overhear people talking at the next table, they’re talking about baseball.

They’re talking about the government. They’re talking about Obama. They’re talking about their company. They’re talking about the stock market. Let me ask you a question. Are those things in your circle of influence or—they are in your circle of concern or you wouldn’t be talking about them. You’re concerned about them.

And what are we talking about? We’re talking about the government. We’re talking about a specific politician—we’ll call that Obama. We’ll call the next one your job, the next one corporations in general, the next one will be the stock market, the next one will be mutual funds, which I guess that falls under stock market. Gold. All you guys spend your time talking about is stuff you have no control over.

No wonder your life is a wreck. No wonder you’re not in the financial position you want to be in, the physical condition, you don’t have the relationships you want. All of your time is being invested in stuff that is completely useless. And you ready for this? It’s all ego based because when you talk about stuff you’re not willing to do anything about, you can’t do anything about, you are just rambling on about your own doggone ego. That’s why people are failing.

When’s the last time you went out and sat at a table and the four of you—all right, let’s say it’s ladies’ afternoon out or night out or guys’ night out, how many of you sat across the table and said, man, you know what, guys, gals, we can’t depend on jobs because they’re outside our circle of influence. We really can’t control whether we have a job or don’t have a job.

We can’t control our savings because it’s in the stock market, and we don’t control what goes on in the stock market. So we need to start talking about something that we do control. This would be something within our circle of influence. I want to actually own something. When’s the last time you talked about something like that when you were out with your buddies? You didn’t.

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