Why Rescue Dog Advocates Need to Know about the Circle of Influence

Have you ever thought about how much control you have over your life?

How about influence?

I remember the time in my life when control reigned supreme. Steeped in law for two decades and counting, I wrestled with power struggles, freedom of creativity, and the limited, frustrating, soul-stopping energy of disenfranchisement. I railed against forces over which I literally had no control as a habit formation, until it became part of my character.

Admittedly, these issues continue to plague me to this very day.

Issues of control and influence over any one thing in our respective lives will be with us until the end of our days on this blessed earth. They are as intrinsic to living as eating healthy food, and we have choices in each and every moment, over how we handle them.

One of my favorite teachers on the issue is the late Stephen Covey, author of the seminal book on leadership thinking, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. On the throes of sudden divorce, my former gave me his book with all his best wishes.

I think this will help you, I remember him saying, as he climbed into his pickup truck. It was a tumultuous time, and I struggled with every aspect of knowing how to live without the solidity of my long-term marriage and his family by my side. Every interaction, every input, every exposure, felt as overwhelming as the grief and confusion flooding into my life.

I needed a way to discern and decide, and found a valuable resource that I still refer back to thirteen years later. It’s particularly relevant in rescue dog advocacy, where I constantly ask myself:

Is this within my Circle of Influence, or does it lie within my Circle of Concern?

Perhaps you’re already familiar with Stephen Covey’s work, but for those of us who, like myself, learned of such functional ways to navigate through a complicated and growing more so society, allow me to introduce the notions of Proactive Focus, versus Reactive Focus:

Proactive Focus

Proactive people focus their efforts in the Circle of Influence. They work on the things they can do something about. The nature of their energy is positive, enlarging and magnifying, causing their Circle of Influence to increase.

Reactive people…focus their efforts in the Circle of Concern. They focus on…circumstances over which they have no control. Their focus results in blaming and accusing attitudes, reactive language, and increased feelings of victimization. The negative energy generated by that focus, combined with neglect in areas they could do something about, causes their Circle of Influence to shrink.

Reactive Focus

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…

What are the Circles of Concern and Influence?

This is what I have drawn on a pad of easel paper and hang in my barn office, so I can reference it ritually:

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In discussing where our energy and concerns best lie, Stephen Covey offered a story of helping his son through a problem at school:

…As long as we focus[ed] our efforts on those things [over which we had no control], we accomplish[ed] nothing, except to increase our own feelings of inadequacy and helplessness and to reinforce our son’s dependence.

I find this kind of leadership thinking to be foundational in the work of rescue dog advocacy, and I offer it up in the spirit of supporting all of us dog lovers and advocates. In this technologically-driven, hyper-informed, daily deluge of need, overwhelm is an hourly challenge, threatening to consume our emotional sanity and throw us into a rapidly descending spiral of helplessness and despair.

Learning how to stay within my Circle of Influence is a challenge in every situation I encounter, from a posting on LinkedIn to help build a shelter in Uganda (can I really help there, much less afford?) to signing a petition to change policies in San Antonio in favor of dogs (25,000 people signed so far, and I believe that's helpful!). I deeply believe that as animal lovers, we are incessantly bombarded with an interminable daily deluge of need, over which we have limited control.

Hourly, we are faced with accepting our own human limitations:

• ?Geographically, I have more influence within my local shelter, relationship with the volunteer coordinator, my schedule to show up and help dogs, and interacting with the dogs themselves. I can choose to contribute or not over how much time I give to each dog, decide what it is they need in any given out-time (remember the Dog Therapist role I ascribed to myself, to limit my incessant want to adopt every one?), and other things like promoting them on social media to increase exposure.

All of this helps feed my love of animals and help the shelter dogs get that coveted forever home.

• Promotional / activity-wise, I can help with local adoption events, fundraising, finding place for such events, and coordinating dogs to attend. I can publish a Pet of the Week in my local paper to promote, and because I volunteered at my local shelter, I know the candidates well enough to opine on them when people ask, Is he good with other dogs? for instance.
• Relationally / politically, I have no more control over the powers-that-be in San Antonio than in Saskatchewan. I can help support someone advocating for dogs and their well-being there, but I have no control over the decisions of others, no power to request information, and as I’m not a constituent, they will have little regard for any words I have to offer. If there’s a petition that can be helpful to sign my name on to I’m always game, and as we all know, some petition sites are more effective than others.
• Advocacy-wise, we all have opportunities in any given moment for a polite conversation with a stranger, even, to increase awareness for the plight of homeless dogs. Weekly, my husband and I take our Texas cruelty survivor down to town, and when people ask over the reason for a wheelchair for Willie Grommit, we share a bit of his story. At the end we let them know how joyful and resilient he is, how valuable his life and that there are many, many more of his friends in need and worth saving. And who knows, perhaps that conversation will be in the back of their minds on the day they decide that they’d like to have a dog in their home.
• Skill-wise, I can offer grant writing to small nonprofits using my writing, research and communication skills, to acquire much-needed funding to support dogs in the care of foster-based rescues. Myriad of places exist to ask for funding, and in the words of Wayne Gretzky, You miss 100% of the shots you never take…

The point is, each and every one of us has only so much life energy, financial resources, time, emotions, or mental energy to give. Making choices based upon where our greatest impact lies – staying within our Circle of Influence -- helps preserve not only our emotional and psychological sanity, but in the words of fellow advocate Davyd S. with NoKillColorado, deepens our work locally. If I follow his example and look more closely at what I can do in my own physical sphere, I can find sustainable paths forward to help the lives of more dogs.

Isn’t that the reason we all got into rescue dog advocacy to begin with? I think so.