Monthly Archives: October 2009

The circles: Circle of Concern and the Circle of Influence…

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tt twitter micro4 The circles: Circle of Concern and the Circle of Influence...

Now that we have discussed working with the end in mind, proactivity and the power of choice, I want to discuss two very important circles in your life; the circle of concern and the circle of influence.  Picture two circles, one slightly smaller that resides within the other.  Like how a tire rides on a rim.  The tire would be your circle of concern.  Within this circle of concern resides everything you have ever thought of in your life that concerns you.  This is anything you worry about; are excited about; are angry about; are happy about.  They could be a concern for the environment, or excitement for a wrestling match, or anger about war, whatever the case may be, it resides within your circle of concern.  The smaller circle or the “rim” is your circle of influence.  Anything that concerns you and you can somehow control it or influence the outcome of it resides within you circle of influence.  For example you may have a very tough opponent to wrestle.  You may be feeling anxiety, fear, worry, excitement, anger, etc.  Any concern you have about this opponent falls with in you circle of concern.  How you choose to view these concerns determines whether they are in the circle of concern or the circle of influence.  If you worry about how tough HE is, than your working in your circle of concern.  If you worry about what YOU can do to offset his toughness, than you are working within you circle of influence.  If you fear his devastating double leg takedown than you are working in the circle of concern.  If you are worried how you will offset his double leg takedown, than you are working in the circle of influence.  What it really comes down to is if you ever go outside yourself for the answer to a problem, than that is the first problem.

So each time you are concerned about something always ask yourself what can you do to fix it.  If it is something that is absolutely out of your control, than you need to figure out how to live with it.  Spending precious mental energy on worrying about uncontrollable things is crazy.

Dan Gable prior to the 1972 Olympic Summer Games in Munich, would wake up in the middle of the night and say to himself “the Russians are training!” and he would do push-ups or sit-ups until he was exhausted again.  To me that is an amazing example of someone working within their circle of influence.  He made to conscious choice to take an outside stimulus like the Russians training which he had zero control over, and make it an internal choice to trump their training by training himself harder.  That is an extreme example of working from the inside out.  His concern of having undisputed victories was the catalyst for his choice to train so hard.

You can increase the size of your circle of influence by always being proactive.  Asking the right questions of yourself; doing what is principally right; working from your values; using you power of choice.  All these together will increase you circle of influence to the point where it may be the same size as your circle of concern.  Just remember their will be people out there that do not understand these tools, and might even resent or dislike your approach.  Don’t listen to them, just remember that inside you is all that matters.

So the next time you are concerned with something, make sure you understand where it lies within your circles.  Next, we will discuss emotions and how they should be utilized rather than ignored.

Thanks,

Gerry

Working with the end in mind….

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tt twitter micro4 Working with the end in mind....

OK, so you have an understanding of proactivity and a basic idea of working with the end in mind.  Awesome, you now have an edge over your competition.  We still have a long way to go, but remember that the journey is just as important as the destination.

So lets dig deeper into working with the end in mind.  What is so important about this concept, and how will it aid wrestlers?

  1. When visualizing the end results, you need to use your imagination.  When you tap your creative energy you move from self-doubt into possibility.  Your creative mind only cares about what “can” happen not what won’t.  It does not know the definition of “can’t”.  Your mind does not discriminate between what is real and what is imagined.  So the more you operate at this energy level, the more your mind “see’s” you achieving your goal, the more confidence your “logical” mind receives to actually take action and pursue your goal.
  2. When you visualize the end result, write down what it is.  Then think backwards about all the “milestones” you need to reach along the way.  Think in great detail, brainstorm everything and write it down.  Don’t worry if it seems like a bad idea, because the sorting will be done later.  When you write all the information down it creates an imprinted “booklet” in your cognitive mind, and the more you “see” the information, the more your mind believes it to be true.  As well as creating a cognitive link in your mind, you also have a visual aid or a road map to help if suddenly you get derailed or stalled along the way.
  3. Lastly by creating this plan on paper it allows you to show it to your support staff.  When your support staff can see your ideas, they may even have some awesome ideas you never thought of.  This can lead to an even greater plan, and could open your mind to other possibilities.  This kind of joint effort is known as “synergy”, which by definition is the interaction of two or more agents or forces so that their combined effect is greater than the sum of their individual (1+1=3 idea).  This allows you to discuss your goals with your coach, parents, wife, girlfriend, whoever you have designated as your accountability partner.  Your accountability partner is essentially your milestone police; they are the one’s who will make sure you are staying on track, and kick your butt if your not.

In closing you would never drive somewhere strange without a road map, so why live your life without one?  Hopefully you now can see why planning your goals, writing them down and sharing them will help you achieve them.

Next we will discuss the circle of concern and the circle of influence and what they mean.

Thanks,

Gerry

Being proactive and what it means…..

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tt twitter micro4 Being proactive and what it means.....

When we discussed the power of choice I hope it opened some eyes.  We get bombarded with stressers all day, everyday and it is easy to get overwhelmed and overdrawn and it is easy to blame others for our shortcomings.  When we recall that we indeed have the power to choose our reactions to those stressers, it puts us back in control.  We empower ourselves and work from our constant within.  In this post I discussed principles and their meaning.  When we work out of principles and values, and remember our power of choice it moves us from being dependent on our environment to being in control.  The next step is becoming proactive and move into independency.

What does the word proactive mean to you?  To me it means to be active first, to happen first.  It means to not wait for direction to take action, its action and result oriented behavior that’s done without direction.  This is where the wrestlers in my audience are going to start to have an “A-ha” moment.  How many wrestlers show up to practice and wait for the coach to tell you to start warming up?  How many guys out there show up to practice and start warming up before their coach tells them to?  I am betting that the majority wait for direction.  This is not your fault, we have lived in a society that conditions people to wait till they are told to take action.  This is an ideal that was created back when we moved from the agricultural age to the industrial age.  In industry machines do all the work and people operate the machines.  Since this is a repeatable task, and all the thought work had been taken out of it, people’s thoughts and talents don’t matter, they in essence are viewed as dumb objects that require management.  All that is needed is a supervisor to oversee everything.  One “coach” to take care of all the workers.  This thought process slowly crept into our psyche and conditioned us to handle every aspect of our lives in that same fashion.  We simply wait for directions.  Now don’t get me wrong, there are times when you need to wait for direction, but a majority of the time you do not.

This is where proactivity changes the rules of the game.  YOU know what needs to be done to achieve at your sport, so be proactive and do what needs to be done.  A coach is there only to support YOU, and to help YOU when YOU need it.  Remember that YOU have a choice to take YOUR wrestling to the next level.  No one else is going to do it for you.  No one else is going to make your choices for you.  So a proactive approach to your career might be to determine where YOU want to be.  Do you want to be a conference champion, state champion, national champion, olympic champion?  Whatever it may be you need to acknowledge where you want to be.  Once you know where you want to go then think backwards and WRITE DOWN every milestone that needs to be achieved along the way to get to your ultimate goal.  This is called working with the end in mind.  When you work with the end in mind, you are forcing your brain to encounter every obstacle you may encounter.  When you “reverse” engineer your career, you take the guess work out of what needs to be done.  This will further push your proactivity by pushing you to do what needs to be done to achieve your goals.  Every great champion does not wait for directions, because they already know what direction they need to go in.  They just require the support of others to get there.

All this can only be achieved by being proactive.  If you wait for someone to tell you what to do, you already missed the boat.  Maybe use the slogan I use…..The world doesn’t happen to me, I happen to the world!!!  So now you have a few tools to get started.  You now have a different view of yourself and your career.  You have taken back control of yourself, and are taking responsibility for your actions.  What you do with it is your choice….

Next I will elaborate on the working with the end in mind, as well as talk about your circle of influence and your circle of concern.

Thanks,

Gerry