How to Control Your Life – Locus of Control in Everyday Life
What is Locus of Control?
The locus of control represents our generalized expectations regarding the forces that determine rewards and punishments. People with an internal locus of control believe that events are nothing but the result of their actions. People with an external locus of control view events as being controlled by external factors such as luck.
For example, a person with an internal locus of control will attribute failure in achieving a goal to unsatisfactory personal training, while a person with external locus of control will attribute failure to circumstances beyond personal control. How individuals interpret such events has a profound effect on their psychological well-being. If people feel they have no control on future outcomes, they are less likely to seek solutions to their problems.
Locus of control is a concept that has a significant effect on our everyday lives.
People with an external locus of control believe that their actions don’t influence future outcomes. Thus, these people are unlikely to act in order to achieve their full potential due to motivational, emotional, cognitive deficits that they create themselves. In fact, people with an external locus of control are more prone to suffer from depression or other diseases because they don’t believe that their actions can improve their current position.
People with an internal locus of control see the world from a more adaptive position. They believe that perseverance and personal skills will lead them to positive results. Thus, these person are more likely to face challenges and succeed in their future endeavors. Even if their actions don’t lead them to any result, the belief that their actions could be useful represents a huge help in the development of psychological well-being.
How to get an internal locus of control
- Set goals for yourself and notice how, working on this and getting results, you will succeed in controlling what happens in your life. As you do this, you will raise your self-confidence.
- Develop skills to make decisions and solve problems and you will feel more confident about your ability to control what happens. With these tools, you’ll find that you can understand and go through various situations which, with an opposite approach, could affect you.
- Pay attention to your inner voice. When you hear you saying to yourself “I have no other choice” or “There’s nothing I can do ‘, remember that you actually have control. It’s your choice whether you want or not to do this.
Your locus of control says a lot about how you see the world and your role to have a say about your own life course. When you think you have power of control over your own destiny, you will have a strong internal locus of control. In most cases, this attitude is essential if you want to meet success.
In conclusion, people with internal locus of control tend to work and persevere more in order to get what they want. This does not mean that having an external locus of control is always bad. There are some situations in which this approach can work well. The key to your personal development is to understand the nature and your tendency to adapt to situations that you face.
References:
www.mindtools.com
psychcentral.com
