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Sometimes, you don't realize just how much you have changed over time until you hold a mirror up and see that you've gotten a little more or less of this or that. Or perhaps a whole lot more. But it's not even just about looks. It could be that you now don't give two *F*s about what other people think, and you once were a pro people-pleaser.

![1740066919019.jpg](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/olujay/EppLkCrRUESEGVRLvmd5FPG6wHSX7PJ8tZigV7cFNWPQbnUgpsWaVTt2RsbnsHgoUHf.jpg)

It could be anything, really. But one thing is for sure: you're constantly changing. We all are. And you're either reactive or proactive about it. The question is, how often do we hold up that mirror to know which it is? Enough going around in circles and let's talk about, uh, circles.

There was once a time when things got so tough and hard that I thought so hard and long, to the point that I had begun developing a migraine. Things were seemingly not going as planned. Often, in a bid to control it, I'd only end up exasperated to reach a dead end all over again. It wasn't until I read a book that enlightened me about two circles that I realized I was going about it the other way around.

You see, there are often things that concern us every now and then, but only a number of them are under our influence. For example, you can't always determine what someone else would do, and you also cannot know everything that will happen today. Those could be things that may concern us or affect us in some way, but oftentimes nothing much we could do about them. What's within our control, however, are the things we think and the actions we take.

Stimulus and response. Unlike animals, there's a gap between stimulus and response where we have the endowment to decide. That is, we can always choose our responses to the things that happen to and around us. That right there... is something that's within our circle of influence.

The paradigm of always trying to control what's within our circle of concern rather than just that small circle within it that we can influence, it shrinks the gap between response and stimulus. And that's the difference between being reactive, directed by what's happening to and around us, and being proactive—choosing our response.

Might seem pretty obvious, but hardly do people actually realize it. At least, I hardly thought much about it until the recent years when I sought knowledge in books, read more and understood much better. Paradigm shift, innit? But let's be real, it can be hard when you're used to a certain scripting. Like all habits, however, it's learnable. I like to consider it a journey rather than a destination. I keep learning about myself every day anyway.
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