Practical Magic: The Circle of Concern

Freya Blom
Sep 23
6 min read

This month’s issue of Practical Magic is inspired by this quote from Adam Grant:

“Our scarcest, most precious resource is not time or energy. It’s attention.

Our circumstances are often beyond our control. Our concentration is within it.

Where we focus shapes our happiness, success, and relationships”

We often long for more control. If only we could shape circumstances to our will - people would behave differently, plans would unfold smoothly, outcomes would bend in our favour. But so much of life is beyond us. Accidents, the weather, the decisions of other people - none of these are within our direct grasp.

While we can't always choose which events happen in life, what we can do is examine our beliefs and the stories we tell ourselves, and from there choose where to point our attention and place our focus. In this way we can consciously direct our resources towards the impact we would like to see come to fruition.

Introducing the Locus of Control

The psychologist Julian Rotter first described the idea of the locus of control in the 1950s. He noticed that people differ in where they believe the control over life’s events resides. Because our beliefs shape the way we tend to meet life, understanding where we sit on the continuum is a very useful and important consideration.

With an external locus of control, we see outcomes as the result of luck, fate, or the power of others.
With an internal locus of control, we see outcomes as influenced by our own choices and actions.

Neither perspective is right or wrong, and of course there is a lot of grey in the middle! As with any concept, it is at the extreme ends of the spectrum where things become difficult.

When a belief system centres the external locus, we can feel powerless, believing we are at the mercy of forces that we can’t change. While it’s true that any of us can be an actual victim of all kinds of circumstances, believing we have no control over ourselves or our lives is deeply disempowering. It can lead to feelings of helplessness, and can even be used as a way to avoid taking accountability.

When we center the internal locus, we can feel more agency, resilience, and hope. We believe we are in the driver's seat and can set the direction of our lives. At the same time, if we believe we can control absolutely everything, and then things unfold in a difficult way that we would not have chosen, we can pick up and carry big unnecessary burdens and over-take accountability, which leads to guilt, shame, and burnout.

The Circle of Concern

The "Circle of Concern" from Stephen Covey's The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People builds on and addresses the grey found between the two ends of the Locus of Control. Covey distinguishes between proactivity (focusing on what we can do and can influence) and reactivity (focusing energy on things beyond our control). The Circle of Concern is a brilliant tool I share with clients to help create distinct boundaries of ownership and thus support their energy by directing actions in a much more effective (and objective) way.

Circle of Concern (reactivity)

This is the largest, outer circle. It holds the things you care about but cannot directly change. Climate change, the global economy, the choices of other people, the past - they may weigh heavily on you, but they aren’t within your gift to manage. Staying in this circle too often can lead to reactivity and feelings of victimisation. Imagine someone who has spent years blaming their parents for things that went wrong in their life. There may be truth in their story, but when their main attention and focus is on the past, the present feels stuck, and the future feels closed.

Instead of attempting to control the past by focusing on it, shifting our attention to things we can genuinely impact or control frees up energy, moving it from the unchangeable past to the possibilities of the present. The shift doesn’t erase pain. But it creates space for freedom. And from that freedom, new choices can emerge.

Circle of Influence (proactivity)

Within the circle of concern sits the circle of influence: the space where you do not have total control, but it’s possible that your actions and presence can make a difference. This is where there is a definite chance that your own behaviour might impact a person, place, situation, outcome. It makes sense that a lot of things sit in this circle, as we all live in an interconnected web of action and response. How you respond in a challenging situation, the tone you set in a conversation, or the way you contribute to a team’s atmosphere cannot offer a guaranteed outcome but opens the door to a different path.

We quite often confuse things in this circle with things in the circle of control. Knowing how far our circle of influence extends is an important aspect of our personal effectiveness, along with forming partnerships and alliances. Consider that a team can have a wider circle of influence than an individual. While we may not have direct control over something in our Circle of Concern, we may indeed know people who do.

Circle of Control (agency)

At the very centre is the circle of control. This is the smallest circle, and one we often overlook or confuse. It’s where your direct power lies: your thoughts, your words, your choices. If someone were to put a gun to your head and tell you to sing, you have the control over whether you sing. That is an extreme example but that is useful in illustrating that even in the most difficult circumstances we can make a choice, even if that choice does not feel like one.

When we pour all our attention into the circle of concern, life feels overwhelming, and all of our decisions flow from our wounding and our fears. Life is viewed in black and white.

When we consciously zoom out and change our perspective, we can redistribute our attention more accurately. Moving our attention back towards discerning what lies under our influence and what is within our control.

Clarity around what lies within each returns our energy and agency and in turn boosts our resilience. It sharpens our perspective, helping us to feel steadier and more grounded, lighter and more effective.

One of the main challenges my clients face is our human habit of unconsciously placing items we can only influence in our circle of control. And placing concerns that we do in fact have control over, into the circle of influence, or even concern.

If you have mistakenly placed an issue in your circle of control and it does not happen (because it belongs in the circle of influence) then you might feel like a failure, lose trust in yourself/your power, and you will definitely have drained energy unnecessarily.

The importance of putting things in the correct circle cannot be overstated when it comes to caretaking your energy and self-trust.

Growing and shrinking our circles

In simple terms, focusing our energy on things we can influence enables us to make effective change. When we demonstrate our agency and proactivity, we grow trust with others which increases our circle of influence.

Putting too much energy into things we cannot change, shrinks our circle of influence. Our energy will be drained and more importantly, pointing blame can lead to others finding us unduly negative and critical.

Practical Magic: working with the circles

It is interesting to ask yourself:

Which circle does it feel like I am living in right now?
Where can I step closer to the centre?
And what might change if I do this?

Circle audit:

This is powerful reflection exercise that you can do on a regular basis to retain perspective:

List your concerns - everything that’s on your mind.
On a piece of paper, plot the circles. Now write the concerns in the circles that you have automatically been putting them in.
Look closely. Move them into the correct circles. Notice how it feels in your body when they are correctly placed.
Now - loosen your grip over anything that rests in the outer circle. Your inner two circles are the places where your energy has the greatest potential impact. Choose which circle you would like to focus on next as your priority.
Spend some time in the circle of your choice considering what your desired outcome is for each concern and the action you can realistically and sustainably take towards it.

Deepening your practice

Practices act as a kind of attention training, and over time they invite an ever deeper sense of agency and perspective. They grow our capacity for self compassion, and most importantly they gift us grace in the face of the sometimes painful task of accepting what we cannot change.

At any moment, simply ask yourself: Where is my attention? Notice what shifts when you choose to place it somewhere else.

Or you might like to do a daily check-in:

Notice: Where is your attention today? Which circle are those things in?
Pause and ask: Is focusing here serving me right now? Or - how is focusing on this serving me right now?
Choose: If a shift of focus or circle would help, gently refocus your attention.