-Many years ago, I was in church one Sunday and the pastor was talking about an exercise he did when someone came to him for counseling.

He said that the person usually had an issue with another person, whether it was a spouse, business partner, friend, coworker, etc. The pastor said that he would take a blank sheet of paper and draw a circle on it. Then he would hand the person the paper and tell them to fill in the circle like a pie chart on how much of the issue was the other person’s fault. It could be anywhere from 0-100% their fault.

He then told the congregation that he never had a person fill in the entire circle. He said usually it was half and half according to the people who came to him for counseling. Even if they thought the other person was mostly to blame, they would only fill in 99% of the circle.

He would then say to the person that the part of the circle that they filled in, even if it was 99%, they had no control over. The part of the circle that was their responsibility, even if it was just 1%, was what they needed to work on.

I took that to heart. I have almost no control over what happens to me, only how I react to it. I need to work on my own faults and hand ups, even if it is only 1%.