Draw a tiny dot in the middle of a piece of paper and draw a large circle around it. You are the tiny dot and the circle represents your circle of influence. Next draw arrows from you (tiny dot) out toward the circle. Draw them so they look like spokes on the wheel of a bicycle. Most humans live life like this, they constantly try to change teammates in an attempt to impact their sphere of influence. This is a great source of mental anguish in our world and leads to mental illness. Look around for countless examples, they’re everywhere. Self centered and other controlling, is a recipe for driving yourself nuts. Do you see it? Last night The Ohio State team of grapplers sat in it. Good.
Normal teammates, you see, focus their efforts on changing people and circumstances to increase the size and substance of their sphere of influence. They know exactly what is wrong with everyone else and nothing of what is rotten and decaying in themselves. They believe that a better bride, teammate, coach, CFO, and less nosey neighbor is all they need. When they manipulate the system and get what they think they’ve always wanted, it rarely works. When it does work it has a very unsightly, unintended consequence. It makes the self centered winner ever moreso the narcissist. Yikes.
Our aim at BTL is to help our family, friends, and clients build a recipe for mental health. We call this mental health 101. Here is the recipe for building yourself into someone mentally strong. Let’s revisit our earlier drawing. Take that same circle you drew earlier and begin to draw around the tiny dot in the middle. You will notice the arrows are losing size as you increase yours. This represents you working on building you. The stronger you get the more influence follows. Remember, mass attracts mass.
Mass attracts mass.
Now draw the tiny dot into a filled in circle. The more you become CORE centered and self controling the more influence flows your way. When you look at your piece of paper now you see a tiny dot transformed into a massive one that has become a strong CORE . sCORE. This is the one you want. The recipe for mental health 101 is another simple word change. Instead of following the worlds model which we now know doesn’t work, we decide to focus our efforts where they will have the deepest impact, on changing ourselves. Instead of becoming self centered and other controlling we build a better second nature. We become CORE centered and self controlling. Freakin’ magic. What happens to this CORE centered circle of influence?
It’s off the charts. It’s off the mat’s too…
