It’s hard to know how to write about the political and existential moment we’re living through. In a little more than a month, this administration has wreaked havoc in ways that have had devastating effects on people’s lives in this country and around the world. I imagine none of us are immune from feeling the harm – at some level – of these horrifying actions and the fear of what may come. I have no silver lining to share, but I have been thinking about cultivating resilience, for myself as much as for my clients.
A framework I have been turning to is spheres of influence, popularized by author Stephen Covey, which helps us acknowledge our worries, while encouraging us to lean into where we can have an impact. Its simplicity is part of its utility. It shows three concentric circles: the innermost represents what we can control; the middle represents what we can influence; and the outermost represents what concerns us. What goes in each of these spheres is individual and depends on what we care about, where we hold power, and where we can take action. For me, at least, it fosters some sturdiness for living within chaos and complexity. Here are a few of the insights it has offered me:
1. We retain control over our own beliefs, attention, resources, and actions.
While our circle of control may feel woefully small and ever shrinking - and for some of us it is even smaller due to material conditions and marginalization - we always have something that lies within this sphere. We can choose how to look out for our communities and in our workplaces by modeling the kind of interdependent culture we want to live in. We can choose what news and media we consume. We can choose how to spend our money and share other resources and social capital. We can anchor in our core values and seek opportunities to embody those as we move through the world.
2. Those beliefs, attention, resources, and actions have ripple effects.
Since I find inspiration in the understanding of how interconnected the world is, imagine each of our little concentric circles floating through space together. Every day these circles bump into each other in ways that have positive and negative impacts. This can be through our most intimate relationships, interactions with strangers, or organized action with others working toward a common goal. What we do in our sphere of control can bolster other people’s orbiting circles. Whether that is through sharing resources, making others’ projects visible, providing emotional support, showing up for people in times of suffering and of joy – these things can widen someone else’s sphere of control so that all of us can better access the tools at our disposal to make change.
3. We can extend our sphere of influence through collective action.
This model is not binary: what we can and can’t control. It also includes a sphere of influence where we don’t have direct command over what happens, but we may be able to sway it to some degree. There are spaces each of us exert some influence and we can be strategic about how we leverage that. But we can also expand our sphere of influence through coordinated action with other people. This can take many forms: nonviolent direct action, gathering with community members to provide mutual support, joining a union or aligning with co-workers who want to shift organizational culture or policies – just to name a few. What feels meaningful and doable in this sphere will be different for each of us but, I believe, it will always be more potent and pleasurable to do with others.
4. Acknowledging the limits of our control and influence allows us to more purposefully direct our energy.
The sphere of concern may seem like a throwaway, a fancy name for a simple but dispiriting truth that there is much in this world that profoundly worries us and which we cannot directly change. In scenario planning, a valuable organizational tool for managing complexity, we’d identify these as critical uncertainties: forces that we can’t predict or control but which have a real bearing on our lives. Knowing those exist and what they are allows us to buttress ourselves by preparing and attending to what we can do to help weather those shifting uncertainties. Identifying what’s in our circle of concern allows us to accept that we care deeply about it, while pointing us to conserve our energy for the spheres of influence and control.
Right now, our spheres of concern may be larger than they’ve ever been and that, unfortunately, is unlikely to change anytime soon. But within any circle of concern lies a circle of influence and a circle of control. However small they may seem, they are there and they are ours to inhabit. For me, that offers some ground to stand on and gives me a place to begin.