202109121517 Circle of concern

A metaphorical circle posited by Stephen Covey in his book 202106221713 Seven habits of highly effective people.¹

This circle is a superset of our 202109121517 Circle of concern and 202109121516 Circle of influence. We should seek to minimize the things we allow into our circle of concern.

Anything that we're concerned about, but have no influence or control over, will cause stress and negative pressure on the things that you can influence or control. Identifying what you can and can't affect can drastically empower your actions and allow you to move from a state of 202109121550 Maturity of dependence to 202109121536 Maturity of independence and possibly into 202109121530 Maturity of interdependence.

On the other hand, this circle is something that highly effective people can think about and use to their advantage. For instance, we know that we can't control how cold the winter will be this year, but being interested in the weather patterns and using that concern as a source of information that informs our actions in some way that we can control — such as investing in natural gas that will be used to heat homes — could be beneficial. The goal is to know things in the circle of concern, but not allow them to affect us in negative ways.