Quotes About Control

We are responsible for our own effectiveness, for our own happiness, and ultimately, I would say, for most of our circumstances.

Determine whether it is a direct, indirect, or no control problem.

They want other people to be the way they want them to be. They often want to clone them, and they surround themselves with "yes" people—people who won't challenge them, people who are weaker than they.

It's not what happens to us, but our response to what happens to us that hurts us. Of course

It's not what happens to us, but our response to what happens to us that hurts us.

self-initiated and feeds upon itself. You will develop your abilities faster by learning to make and keep promises or commitments. Start by making a small promise to yourself; continue fulfilling that promise until you have a sense that you have a little more control over yourself. Now take the next level of challenge.

Reactive people, on the other hand, focus their efforts in the Circle of Concern. They focus on the weakness of other people, the problems in the environment, and circumstances over which they have no control. Their focus results in blaming and accusing attitudes, reactive language, and increased feelings of victimization.

As long as we are working in our Circle of Concern, we empower the things within it to control us. We aren't taking the proactive initiative necessary to effect positive change.

The power to make and keep commitments to ourselves is the essence of developing the basic habits of effectiveness. Knowledge, skill, and desire are all within our control. We can work on any one to improve the balance of the three. As the area of intersection becomes larger, we more deeply internalize the principles upon which the habits are based and create the strength of character to move us in a balanced way toward increasing effectiveness in our lives.

If I really want to improve my situation, I can work on the one thing over which I have control—myself.

For those filled with regret, perhaps the most needful exercise of proactivity is to realize that past mistakes are also out there in the Circle of Concern. We can't recall them, we can't undo them, we can't control the consequences that came as

But much of our current emphasis on independence is a reaction to dependence—to having others control us, define us, use us, and manipulate us.

While we can't always control what happens to us, we can always choose how we react to life's challenges.

Si nuestros sentimientos controlan nuestras acciones, ello se debe a que hemos renunciado a nuestra responsabilidad y a que permitimos que los sentimientos nos gobiernen.

I'm convinced that too often parents are also trapped in the management paradigm, thinking of control, efficiency, and rules instead of direction, purpose, and family feeling. And leadership is even more lacking in our personal lives. We're into managing with efficiency, setting and achieving goals before we have even clarified our values.

REACTIVE LANGUAGE PROACTIVE LANGUAGE There's nothing I can do. Let's look at our alternatives. That's just the way I am. I can choose a different approach. He makes me so mad. I control my own feelings. They won't allow that. I can create an effective presentation.

But we are responsible—"response-able"—to control our lives and to powerfully influence our circumstances by working on be, on what we are.

Habit 1 says, "You are the programmer." Habit 2, then, says, "Write the program." Until you accept the idea that you are responsible, that you are the programmer, you won't really invest in writing the program.

Because we are, by nature, proactive, if our lives are a function of conditioning and conditions, it is because we have, by conscious decision or by default, chosen to empower those things to control us.

Reactive people build their emotional lives around the behavior of others, empowering the weaknesses of other people to control them.

such as letting the weaknesses of other people ruin our emotional lives or feeling victimized by people and events out of our control.

Your body is the only instrument through which you operate in life. If you don't get control of your body, how can you control the expressions that come through your body and your mind?

But I kept thinking about it. I really went inside myself and began to ask, 'Do I have the power to choose my response?

As we look at those things within our Circle of Concern, it becomes apparent that there are some things over which we have no real control and others that we can do something about.