Steven Covey’s book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families describes the Circle of Concern and the Circle of Influence. I love this analogy because focusing your energy within the Circle Concern only makes those concerns grow larger without impacting your circle of INFLUENCE in any positive way.
If we subscribe to the idea that your energy and focus creates growth this means our focus should be in the Circle of Influence. That is what you can control. Your reach of influence. The other things are the things that you cannot change.
How does this apply to blogging?
There are a lot of things that you flat do not have control over as a blogger. How exactly Google decides to rank you. Or WHEN Google decides to finally rank you, for example. What are some other things we cannot control, but can certainly be concerned about if we let ourselves.
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Cannot force people to read.
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Participate.
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Treat you nicely.
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Click an ad.
What can you control? Plenty! You CAN control yourself. You can write more articles. Ask for guest post spots on influential blogs. Connect with others in your field via Twitter, Facebook and blog comments. Do keyword research to make sure relevant ads appear with your articles. Write open-ended blogs with questions to encourage feedback from others. All of these things you CAN control.
Proactive Intention and Action Creates Positive Results
As you focus your energy and attention on these things that you do have control over, you will begin to see the other things you thought you were worried about fall into place. Guest posts and incoming links add up and Google increases your page rank. Engaging your community more frequently and regularly means that they leave comments more often. Thinking about your content means higher quality content and increased revenue.
But not because you focused on the uncontrollable. These things happen because you focused on the controllable. What you directly had influence over. As a result, that influence increased. Your confidence increases. Your reach increases. Because your focus was realistic all this time, instead of wasted on what you couldn’t change yourself.
What Jaeli Taught me About Acting with Proactive Intention
I saw this in action a few months ago when Baby Jaeli needed help. If you didn’t hear the story you can catch a little bit of it on the Jaeli page of this website. Basically, the level of help that she needed was way beyond what I could do by myself. What any one of us could have done by ourselves. I had two choices – 1) Sit and moan and cry about how horrible the situation was or 2) Do WHAT I COULD. And _I_ could do was little more than put the information up on my blog and tweet it out to my friends.
And you know what happened? Each of them, acting within their Circle of Influence, did what THEY could do. They retweeted. Blogged. Emailed reporters. Hosted MomTV shows w/the story featured. Starting Facebook Cause Pages and invited all their friends. And TOGETHER those individual circles of influences added up to a life-changing miracle of generosity for Jaeli and her family.
Assignment –
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What things have you been concerned about when it comes to your blogging and writing? List them out. List them ALL out.
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Now look over your list and circle anything that is not within your circle of influence. See if there is a way to rework that into a proactive comment.
In other words, if you have on your list “I’m worried about increasing my traffic“, I want you to circle that off your list and write beside it “I will apply SEO basics to my new posts this week” or “I will share my new posts via Twitter and Facebook every time I publish something new”. If you feel comfortable doing so, I’d love to see what your list looks like!
My concerns probably all fall into the category of being out of my control. We all worry about things like:
– Will people like what I write?
– Do I look stupid?
– Am I making any sense?
– Is this useful information, or am I wasting my time?
– How can I get more legit people to follow my site?
But while I think about these things sometimes, I don’t dwell on it. Because as you said, it doesn’t do any good. So I talk to the people I know and participate in things like your series here so that I can learn more things that will help me get better at presenting/writing the content on my blog.
Things I can control:
– Seek out what information people want to read/learn about.
– Ask for help with things I don’t know how to do.
– Have people I trust read my posts and give me advice on how to make them better.
– Participate in other blog activities to help introduce my blog to a bigger community.
I commented on your last post about how I reconstructed my blog to direct it in a new direction, by direction being that I was going to consentrate on my passion to write, rather than who was reading it. I was writting what people wanted to see which was out of my niche or atleast border line. I love to save and my friends wanted to know how I was doing it but I was not telling them how I did it, I was telling them how to do it based on research not personal experience. My writing skills flow from the heart not any text book I have read, so I beleive that I am on the right track this time.
I so love the circle diagram I can use that in other aspects of my life as well, Thanx!!
I think there is great advice here, at least for me. I do tend to get hung up on things I can’t control. Here’s my list:
-I get defensive/feelings hurt when I get negative comments. So, cross off and change to: Don’t take negative comments personally. Use them to see another side of an argument, maybe even brainstorm additional article ideas/angles from them.
-I worry that not enough people open the emails and click through to article links from my newsletter. Cross off and change to: I will work to make newsletters more personable, work to make subject lines more irresistable/tempting.
-I take rejection personally, but know that some article queries are going to get rejected. So, change to: I will not take rejections personally, but work to learn what works and what doesn’t based on which queries are accepted and which are rejected. When rejected, I will repackage and send out to another venue for consideration.
-I tend to obsess over numbers and stats and waste time watching them. Change to: Will spend enough time with stats to evaluate which strategies are working but not waste time checking them every 15 minutes or so.
Okay, that’s my list for now. Perhaps it will grow as I think more about it.
Wow! These are amazing responses you guys! 🙂 I’m glad this post spoke to you – and you’re right…it goes WAY beyond just blogging. For example, when I teach childbirth classes I cannot control how someone’s labor will progress, or the choices they will make for themselves. I can only present the information and allow them the right to make their OWN choices and decisions.
@Ginny – I love your comment about having a trusted friend give you feedback on a post. I often do this when it’s something I am either really excited about or really struggling to word properly. 🙂
@Dana – YES! The principle applies to EVERYTHING. “I wish I weren’t scared to speak in public” = living in the circle of concern. “I am going to join Toastmasters and learn to speak publically for only 30 seconds at a time until I am more comfortable” = living within the circle of influence. It applies to EVERY area….Steven Covey’s book is pretty fascinating but this is one of the principles that stuck out most to me.
@Lorie – I wrote a post recently about the potential BENEFITS of negative comments. http://angengland.com/five-potential-benefits-of-negative-blog-comments/ It really helped me a lot to get over my sensitivity to criticism to purpose to find the positive (if possible) in what was being said. Could I take that negative comment and turn it into another article, a networking opportunity, etc? Querying is half art, half science and half luck. Keep going!
I was having a hard time with this assignment. I always thought I was kinda laid back about my blogging, but once I really started thinking about it. I am really not! I am still working on my list. Thanks for making me really think!
@Cheryl – it’s ok. This Ten Habits of Success is an ideal – not something you should be perfect at all the way through. Most is applicable to many areas of life beyond just blogging. Take your time, chew it well and get all the precious kernels out that you want. What doesn’t apply to you at this time, blow away like chaff.