And so it is with our unique human gifts. As we go through life interacting with external circumstances, with other people, and with our own nature, we have constant ongoing opportunities to come face-to-face with our weaknesses. We can choose to ignore them, or we can push against the resistance and break through to new levels of competence and strength.
I have done a human gifts questionnaire 2
many times with thousands of people in many different settings, and the overwhelming finding is this: The gift most neglected is self-awareness. Perhaps you have heard the expression “Think outside the box,” meaning to get outside the normal way of thinking, the normal assumptions and paradigms in which we operate. That’s another expression for using self-awareness. Until the gift of self-awareness is cultivated, the use of conscience, imagination, and willpower will always be “within the box”—that is, within one’s own life experience or one’s present way of thinking or paradigm. So in a sense the unique leveraging of the four human gifts is in self-awareness, because when you have the ability to think outside the box—to examine your own assumptions and your own way of thinking, to stand apart from your own mind and examine it, to think about your very thoughts, feelings, and even moods—then you have the basis for using imagination, conscience, and independent will in entirely new ways. You literally become transcendent. You have transcended yourself; you have transcended your background, your history, your psychic baggage.
This transcendence is fundamental to the life force in all of us and helps unleash the propensity to become, to grow, to develop. It is also fundamental in our relationships with others and in cultivating a beautiful family culture. The more the family has a collective sense of self-awareness, the more it can look in on itself and improve itself: make changes, select goals outside of tradition, and set up structures and other plans to achieve those goals that lie outside social scripting and deeply established habit patterns.
The ancient Greek saying “Know thyself”3 is enormously significant because it reflects the understanding that self-knowledge is the basis of all other knowledge. If we don’t take ourselves into account, all we are doing is projecting ourselves onto life and onto other people. We then judge ourselves by our motives—and others by their behavior. Until we know ourselves and are aware of ourselves as separate from others and from the environment—until we can be separated even from ourselves so that we can observe our own tendencies, thoughts, and desires—we have no foundation from which to know and respect other people, let alone to create change within ourselves.
Developing all four of these gifts is vital to proactivity. You cannot neglect one of them because the key is in the synergy or the relationship among them. Hitler, for example, had tremendous self-awareness, imagination, and willpower—but no conscience. And it proved to be his undoing. It also changed the course of the world in many tragic ways. Others are very principled and conscience driven, but they have no imagination, no vision. They are good—but good for what? Toward what end? Others have great willpower but no vision. They often do the same things again and again with no meaningful end in mind.
And this applies to an entire family as well. The collective sense of these four gifts—the relationship among these gifts as well as the relationship among the individuals in the family—is what enables the family to move to higher and higher levels of achievement and significance and contribution. The key lies in the proper nurturance of all four gifts in the individual and in the family culture so that there is a great sense of self- and family awareness, a highly cultivated and sensitive individual and collective conscience, the development of the creative, imaginative instincts into shared vision, and the development and use of a strong personal and social will to do whatever it takes to fulfill a mission, to achieve a vision, to matter.
The Circle of Influence and the Circle of Concern
The essence of proactivity and the use of these four unique gifts lies in taking the responsibility and the initiative to focus on the things in our lives we can actually do something about. As Saint Francis wrote in his well-known “Serenity Prayer”: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”4
One way to make this differentiation more clear in our minds is to look at our lives in terms of what I call the Circle of Influence and the Circle of Concern. The Circle of Concern is a large circle that embraces everything in your life that you may be concerned about. The Circle of Influence is a smaller circle within the Circle of Concern that embraces the things you can actually do something about.
The reactive tendency is to focus on the Circle of Concern, but this only causes the inner Circle of Influence to be diminished. The nature of energy focused on the outer Circle of Concern is negative. And when you combine that negative energy with neglect of the Circle of Influence, inevitably the Circle of Influence gets smaller.
But proactive people focus on their Circle of Influence. As a result, that circle increases.
Consider the impact of one man’s decision to work in his Circle of Influence:
In my later teens I noticed that Mom and Dad were becoming very critical of each other. There were arguments and tears. They would say things that hurt—and they knew what to say. There was also making up and “everything’s fine.” But over time the arguments increased and the hurt got deeper.
When I was about twenty-one, they finally separated. I remember at the time feeling a great sense of duty and a desire to help “fix it.” I guess that’s a natural response for a child. You love your parents. You want to do everything you can.
I would say to my dad, “Why don’t you just go to Mom and say ‘I’m sorry. I know I’ve done lots of things that hurt you, but please forgive me. Let’s work at this. I’m committed to it.’ ” And he would say, “I can’t. I’m not going to bare my soul like that and have it stomped on again.”
I would say to my mom, “Look at everything you’ve had together. Isn’t it worth trying to save?” And she would say, “I can’t do it. I simply cannot handle this man.”
There was deep unhappiness, deep anguish, deep anger on both sides. And both Mom and Dad went to unbelievable effort to get us children to see that their side was right and the other was wrong.
When I finally realized they were going to divorce, I couldn’t believe it. I felt so empty and sad inside. Sometimes I would just weep. One of the most solid things in my life was gone. And I became consumed with self-focus. Why me? Why can’t I do something to help?
I had a very good friend who finally said to me, “You know what you need to do? You need to stop feeling sorry for yourself. Just look at you. This is not your problem. You are connected to it, but this is your parents’ problem, not yours. You need to stop feeling sorry for yourself and figure out what you can do to support and love each of your parents, because they need you more than they have ever needed you before.”
When my friend said that to me, something happened inside. I suddenly realized that I was not the victim here. My inner voice said, “Your greatest responsibility as a son is to love each of your parents and to chart your own course. You need to choose your response to what has happened here.”
That was a profound moment in my life. It was a moment of choice. It was realizing that I was not a victim and that I could do something about it.
So I focused on loving and supporting both my parents, and I refused to take sides. My parents did not like it. They accused me of being neutral, wimpy, not being willing to take a stand. But they both came to respect my position over time.
As I thought about my own life, it was suddenly as if I could step aside from myself, my family experience, their marriage, and become a learner. I knew that someday I wanted to be married and have a family. So I asked myself, “What does this mean to you, Brent? What are you going to learn from this? What kind of marriage are you going to build? Which of your weaknesses that you happen to share with your parents are you going to give up?”
I decided that what I really wanted was a strong, healthy, growing marriage. And I have since found that when you have that kind of resolve, it gives you the sustaining power to swallow hard in difficult moments—to not say something that will hurt feelings, to apologize, to come back to it, because you are affirming something that is more important to you than just the emotion of the moment.