Concerned by the weather? Then change it (your concern that is)

The darkening skies and encroaching cold do it to me every year. I start wishing I lived in California. The signal is usually the return to GMT, which this year coincided with Halloween – another sign-post indicating the misery ahead for any Earth-dwellers living over 3,500 miles from the Equator.

Sorry, I should cheer up I know: the Christmas Season can be lovely – unless, of course, you own a PR company. And then it’s all contract-renewal paranoia mixed with a truncated-month, fattened pay-packets (except your own) and hungover colleagues.

Oh dear, oh dear – perhaps Stephen Covey can snap me out of it. In the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People he writes that it is the world of the reactive person to spend their lives angry and depressed about things they can do nothing about, such as the weather or December’s unstoppable approach. As far as Covey is concerned, railing against such things is about as effective as barking at the Moon: emotional energy expended with absolutely no return.

Instead, Covey offers us a major point of mental differentiation between what we should, and shouldn’t, be bothered about. If we want to be more effective as a person we have to divide the world into those things we can influence and those we can’t, with the correct focus for our energies being what is within our power to change.

Covey maps this by describing all external inputs into our life as being part of our Circle of Concern. However, some of these inputs are beyond our control, such as – indeed – the weather and the seasons, but also the traffic, or the actions of governments or large corporations (or the unions given London’s recent spate of strikes).

What we can determine within the Circle of Concern – such as our own well-being and our work and home life – he calls our Circle of Influence. And anybody trying to take action to make progress in their life should focus only on what they can change – their Circle of Influence – leaving areas where we have no influence both physically and mentally alone.

Of course, this doesn’t stop us reacting to uncontrollable events beyond our Circle of Influence but still within our Circle of Concern. It is human nature to grumble about such things. Yet if we spend our lives becoming angry at what we are powerless to control we will compound our sense of powerlessness – even ending up feeling victimised by what we perceive as the forces lined up against us. Proactive and effective people, meanwhile, change what is changeable by focusing only on what is within their Circle of Influence – at least according to Covey.

Yet there's a major caveat to this. If we are truly bothered by particular events beyond our Circle of Influence we can make sustained efforts to influence them – perhaps by making that move to California, or by standing as an MP in order to influence governments, or by changing our commuting arrangements to avoid the traffic or transport unions.

Indeed, surely I could do this with my own circumstances? I run my own business, so why not move to California, or Florida, or even the financial boomtowns of Singapore or Dubai? Surely, if I’m that bothered about things within my Circle of Concern (such as the weather) the only mentally-sustainable route is to make the changes necessary to put those things within my Circle of Influence.

So why not? Perhaps because we are fearful of making the move – not an uncommon problem for those with high fear of failure (the target audience for my forthcoming book: What’s Stopping You?). But perhaps there’s another reason. Just maybe any examination of what we’d have to sacrifice to render something within our Circle of Influence reveals that those frustrations aren’t quite as acute as they seem. My desire to live in California, for instance, would require me to disrupt my children’s education – and their burgeoning friendships. It would part us from our friends and family. And it would mean moving away from a city I actually love and admire despite its many frustrations.

Indeed, California seems like a bit of a backwater to me, compared to London or, say, New York. And a move to New York leaves me no better off with respect to the weather (as anyone experiencing a New York winter can tell you). In fact, London winters are usually rather mild (last year excepted). And there’s the skiing season to come. And did I mention Christmas? Sure, the office environment can be a bit annoying during December but experiencing Christmas through the eyes of my two small boys is pretty wonderful. As was Halloween come to that. And there’s the fireworks to come at the weekend…

So just maybe it’s not proactivity that will get me out of my annual autumnal funk – it’s simply finding a different perspective from which to view it.