15 Feb What do you have? An Internal or External Locus of Control?
The little-known term, Locus of Control, relates to what your belief system attributes your success and failures to. Your Locus of Control relates to whether you believe you have control of your own destiny or whether life happens to you. In other words, your locus of control determines where you place significance of your actions into achieving your goals and where your personal responsibility lies for your success and failure.
Locus of Control is divided into External and Internal belief systems. Read further to find out if you have an External Locus of Control or an Internal Locus of Control.
External Locus of Control.
The main belief is that your life happens to you – it is a Passive response to your life.
Common thoughts and behaviours are:
– Why does everything happen to me?
– What will be will be – god, fate, life determines what will happen
– I attribute the success in my life to fate and luck.
– I go with the flow
– Why bother as I have no control in the outcome.
– My destiny is predetermined.
– Influenced by others
– My decisions and choices have no bearing on my life’s outcome.
– Feel anxious due to the belief of lack of choice or control in life.
Internal Locus of Control
The main belief is you make things happen. It’s a Pro-Active response to life.
Common thoughts and behaviours are:
– I have control over my life
– I create my own future
– I make things happen
– I attribute my success to the decisions I make as well as the effort and hard work I put into it
– I am the controller of my destiny
– My passion, choices, hard work, effort and perseverance enable me to achieve my goals
– I make my own mind up and have a good sense of what is right for me to do
– Often have a higher income
– Often a healthy weight and good levels of fitness.
The next time you find yourself blaming life for what hasn’t gone right, or find yourself putting off an important choice, remind yourself that to have an Internal Locus of Control means you take back the control within your life and ultimately will feel happier and less anxious. You can start today by acknowledging that in any given moment, there is always a choice, action or simply a thought that means you can make your life happen instead of life happening to you.
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