Circles of influence The proposed method was devised firstly via mental model prototyping. This is where I have used the circle of influence as well as SCAMPER technique to solve the problem of impulse purchase for myself first before extrapolating the solution outward towards friends and family, acquaintance and city, regional environment and finally India and beyond. This approach of first developing a solution for self before extrapolating out was based on the work of Stephen Covey in his book The 7 habits of highly effective people. The circle of influence method on the other hand is a tool to get people to look at all the things that concern them and help them realize that they have more power than they think over things that feel out of their control. This method is first done via drawing a large circle in which we fill in with things that we associate concern with as seen in Figure 5. This circle that was drawn represents the things in which we feel that is out of control within our lives. Following this, we draw a smaller circle within the large circle which is to represent the things that we can actively control. Subsequently, among the items which was already previously listed, I considered whenever I was ready to moderate my spending on those specific items and thus if I was ready, said items would be moved to the inner circle while if I wasn’t then said items would remain at the outer circle. In my case, I was not quite ready to moderate my spending on these areas and thus why the inner circle remains empty as seen in Figure 5.
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