In 2015, I decided to embark for a 15months Executive MBA at HEC Lausanne. It is quite a journey. Often I compared it to a marathon you have to start slow and be ready for each kilometer, talk to yourself not to give up until the end. After 21 exams, we made it !

During these months, the teachers optimized our time with classes in the morning, afternoon and evening and even sometimes work lunches, the famous AAA lunches. AAA lunches goals were to reflect on some topics to build and develop our awareness and leadership capital.

Among one of them, I discovered the circles of control. I represented it in my below sketch. Basically It describes 3 things. The inner yellow circle is me. In fact I decide to respond to any stimuli or event according to my personality. The second circle represents what I can influence however not fully control and outside the blue circle is everything else, in a nutshell what I cannot control !!!

It was a great learning, and also during this time we worked to develop the player’s mindset instead of the victim’s one. Let’s say you missed your plane because you are short on time to attend an important meeting. If you blame your boss (you worked too much) or the weather (the rain slowed me to the airport)…or your kids (you are late because you have to drop them at school) you focus on the « everything else ». A good thing is to develop the mindset’s player. It is raining and I have to drop my kids at school : SO I plan to leave to the airport at least 2 hours in advance 🙂 !

The point is for any event you have the choice to respond, to take a decision to be a player or a victim. As Viktor Frankl highlighted (Viktor Frankl was an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist ), « between a stimulus and a response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

Alexandre R Rio.