Action vs Reaction — A Powerful, Personal Approach to the Circle of Influence
The circle of action helps us better empower ourselves by choosing action over reaction in our every day decisions.
The circle of influence is one of my favorite concepts. It is a key principle from Stephen Covey’s book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.”
But this concept applies more to business teams and, while being extremely effective, I have had to tweak the model a bit to fit into my own life and help me deal extensively with my day to day problems — especially with my ADHD tendency to react quickly and emotionally.
So, let me present to you, the circle of action — a powerful spin on the circle of influence that can help us better handle events and challenges in our lives as they come.
Quick disclaimer: I understand that this is still very similar to Stephen Covey’s model. I am not trying to take credit here or act like I am some kind of super genius. These are just my thoughts and personal applications as I stand on the shoulders of giants here.
The Circle of Influence Briefly
For those of you who know, or don’t know, what the circle of influence is, let me give a brief rundown.
The circle of influence basically breaks everything in life down to three areas. Areas we have control over directly, areas we have influence over but not direct control, and areas of concern where we have no control or influence at all.
There you go. It’s a great model. (And you can learn more about it in the book 7 Habits.)
The Circle of Action/Reaction
The circle of action basically says that, in every event in our lives, we have the ability to either take action, or give away our power and react.
Before explaining this further, let me illustrate this with some real life application — yesterday at lunch.
I love Costa Vida (restaurant). And, aside from the massive caloric intake and the real world effect of wasting money on my lifestyle over my business, I do like to go there when I have some sort of coupon (ikr).
Well I get nachos, and I make very clear instructions to put everything on the side, otherwise the nachos often get soggy before I get home.
The line was long yesterday. After about a 15 minute wait, I finally paid and got my order. I had my daughter (1 year old) in the back seat as well.
After pulling out of the drive thru I checked on my order to make sure they got it right. Unfortunately, they did not separate the items like I had specifically asked for them to do.
Initially, my reaction is to get upset, just like most of us. But I stopped myself, took a step back, and then said to myself, “Ok. How does the circle of action apply to me here.”
Action Vs. Reaction — Reaction is Often Our First Instinct
Reaction is often instinctual. It’s emotional, it’s raw, and it feels damn good.
But when we react, we aren’t just being emotional, we are giving our power away to someone else.
Reacting says that someone else has the power; the power over how we feel, how we act, and over the situation itself.
Reaction often solves nothing — and can often lead us down a path of negativity and regret.
If we are extremely reactionary, it can be hard to break the habit. But, if for just one second we can stop and apply circle of action thinking to the situation, we put the power back in our hands and deal with the situation more effectively.
Action Vs. Reaction — Action is Power
By stepping back and considering our options, we can take control over any given situation and help determine the outcome.
In my case, sitting there a few feet past the drive thru window, I put off my initial reactionary response and thought through the actions that I could then take.
Option 1: Go back through the drive thru and fix the mistake.
If I wanted, I could go back through the line and correct the mistake. This would have, no doubt, solved the problem.
But the line was extremely long — and it would have taken me another 15–20 minutes at least.
Option 2: Go inside the restaurant and fix my order.
The second option was to go inside the restaurant and fix the order. Now, I had my daughter in the car which would have made this more difficult. I also had my wife’s order in the car, so I would have basically been fixing my problem while creating a new problem for her — so that’s a maybe (lol).
Option 3: Head home and hope for the best.
The last option I came up with was to head home. I knew I had a bag of tortilla chips at home, so worse case scenario I could transfer the toppings onto some new chips.
Now, it really doesn’t matter what I decided to do. The point is, by determining what available actions I could take, I put the power back in my hands to decide my own outcome.
I chose option three, which I surmised was my best option given the situation, and things ended up just fine.
I could have reacted, gone into autopilot, and just starting doing whatever instinctually felt good in the moment. I could get angry, start yelling, and then pout over the possibility of soggy chips.
Or worse, I get angry, drive crazy, and get into a yelling match with someone for driving too close to me, and find myself escalating an entirely unrelated situation — all based on my original reactionary response.
Being reactionary is limiting. It does not help to control or change the outcome in any way.
Dating and Sales — My Experience with the Circle of Action
Nowhere do I find the circle of action more applicable than in the world of dating.
When I was single, I utilized this circle of action many times to help me improve my dating life.
Dating is hard. Often times, a relationship will end after a few days, weeks, or even years, and often leave us devastated wondering just what happened.
And in the dating world, sometimes things just don’t work out. Sometimes people just aren’t “feeling it.” And things can end just because someone doesn’t think things fit the way they want them to.
Nothing you can do about it.
However, I have known many individuals, mostly men, who’s initial reaction to every negative dating situation is to get mad and talk a lot of shit about the girls who rejected them.
This type of reaction not only relinquishes control over the situation, but also prevents an individual from learning from their mistakes and improving.
I’ve been there. We all have. Sitting on the couch at 9pm. Irritated. You thought you had plans with that girl/boy. You’ve sent four text messages to them over the last three hours with no response. And you are just starting to write the fifth.
Then the response. Can’t make it tonight. You make plans for another day.
Within a week it’s over and you are scratching your head wondering why it didn’t work out.
Now, we can either apply the circle of action and try to learn something or we can be reactionary, get mad, maybe feel better, and repeat the cycle all over again.
I am of the opinion that we can always learn something from a failed relationship, even if it isn’t specifically the reason the relationship didn’t work out. Not just in dating, but in every aspect of our lives.
If we look at the circle of action, we might say. “Hey, you know what. Thinking back on my past behavior, I can see that I have been very needy. The actions I took in this relationship may have caused the other person to run away at ‘break-necking pace.’ Next time, maybe I can be a little less desperate, and try to control myself better. That could help improve the outcome of my next relationship.”
This kind of action response can help us learn from our mistakes and improve ourselves in a way that can help us increase our chances for success in any area of our lives.
This same mentality is very applicable in the sales world. Not every sale that falls through is our fault, and, sometimes, a missed sale is better for the person on the other end — and that is just fine.
But we can either get angry, relinquish control of the situation, and respond to it with emotion. Or, we can take action, look at what where we may have made a mistake, and try to improve ourselves in a meaningful way.
It’s really up to us to choose — action or reaction.
Cycle of Reaction — Cycle of Action
Now, before I wrap this up, I do want to throw in a few interesting applications that can help us deepen our understanding of this circle of action.
The Four Cycles
There are four cycles that can be found within this circle of action.
Simply, these are when one of these meets another — in a relationship type setting.
The Cycle of Reaction
The cycle of reaction is when reaction is met with reaction. This is pretty much worst case scenario, and causes many extreme situations that could have been dealt with differently.
Road rage is often the perfect example.
I’m driving along, and someone cuts me off. Maybe on purpose, maybe on accident — doesn’t matter.
I react.
They react to my reaction.
I react to them.
They react to me.
And eventually we are in a parking lot with cop cars and someone is hurt or worse.
This may be an extreme example, but stuff like this happens. If my emotional reaction is more important than anything else in the moment, I give you the control. Then you give that control back to me. Neither of us are acting, only reacting.
The cycle of reaction is literally a situation off the rails.
The Cycle of Action
The cycle of action is its opposite — when action is built upon action.
Often, the greatest bands, businesses, sports teams, etc. are compromised of individuals who take action, and then build off of each other’s action.
One example of this is a band I liked, especially when I was younger— Blink 182. As the story goes, when working on the song “Feeling This,” the two (Mark and Tom) were in separate rooms writing. When they put the two pieces together, it created an amazing and unique juxtaposition which resulted in the creation of a massive hit song.
This team effort can create extremely effective, symbiotic relationships that fuel human creativity and accomplishment — pushing us to the moon, even Mars and beyond.
None of this could be done without this cycle of action.
Action Met with Reaction — Reaction Met with Action
The middle ground here is still ineffective for a relationship, but will not create the negative outcomes that the cycle of reaction can create.
If my action is met with your reaction, little will get done.
In a business relationship, if I am constantly working to produce action, but my business partner is only being reactionary, eventually, I will begin to feel like I am holding the entire business on my shoulders. This type of relationship will often be frustrating, if not fail entirely.
On the other hand, we can illustrate reaction met with action.
If you react at me in with road rage based on some incident, but I take control, and choose to do all in my power to diffuse the situation, often this can stop a situation from escalating further. We probably aren’t going to be best friends, but the situation is kept from spiraling.
Take Control Over Your Life
The circle of influence and the circle of action can help us achieve greater things in our lives than we could ever imagine. Like everything in life, we build one step at a time.
I believe that we can learn from every person, every situation, and every circumstance in our lives. We don’t need to surround ourselves with negative people, but we can still learn positive things from others around us — no matter how positive or negative they are.
We can take control. By focusing on our action, and eliminating reaction, we will find ourselves smarter, happier, and better prepared for more difficult experience in the future.
Life is hard enough in control, living out of control is downright crazy. Hopefully, this circle of action can help all of us improve our lives day by day, little by little, until we find ourselves more successful and happy than we ever thought possible.
