Where Do You Have Your Place Of Control?
It may surprise you. But according to experts, more than 60% of the population has a personality type oriented towards an external locus of control. So it is possible that both you and I fit into this dimension. But what does this mean? To understand it we can put a simple example.
“We meet a friend, and worried about our expression, he asks us: -You look bad, is something wrong? Before the question, our answers could be the following: “My partner has offended me”, “My parents do not support me”, “My best friend did not want to leave me money”, “I have very bad luck”, “Things are going for me getting worse ”.
In essence, having an external locus of control refers to the fact that, in most cases, we attribute to external circumstances – and to people – the responsibility for our state of mind. Another example would be perhaps thinking “Lately I am having a lot of luck”, a common expression where that responsibility attributed to an external frame of reference continues to appear. Let’s look at it carefully.
HOW DO YOU ATTRIBUTE YOUR SUCCESSES OR YOUR FAILURES?
So how does the person with an internal locus of control act? You will ask yourself. These personalities place all responsibility on themselves for what they feel and what they do. It may seem strange to you, but according to psychologists, there are not many people who attribute to themselves all the weight of what happens in their lives.
It is true that we can alternate both locus of control on some occasions. You may know, for example, that having a better job may depend on you (improving your studies, changing your residence, your country), but nevertheless, you may think that the happiness of your emotional life depends exclusively on your partner knowing how to make you happy. , without seeing your own responsibility in it. People are very complex in these types of dimensions, and it is clear that it is not always easy to see our own responsibility in each and every facet that surrounds us.
It is always easy to think that if I do not have a job it is because of the social and political context that surrounds my country, falling little by little and without realizing it in a defeatist attitude. And even more, there are also people who, even though they are not happy in their marriage or in their personal situation, decide to simply endure without taking into account their own needs. The own right to be happy.
What we must be clear about is that there are many external rules that are imposed on us and that we cannot escape from them. We all have duties in many of the contexts in which we move on a daily basis. But within these spheres, we have the right and the ability to control our lives and choose our own path. To do this, to achieve this, we must begin to put the personal pronoun in many of our actions and thoughts. “I will look for all the options to feel better.” “Things are going better for me because I have made an effort to achieve it.” “Right now I feel bad in my personal relationship, and (I) have to do my part to find a solution.” “I am responsible for myself and this is where I want to be.”
We know it is not easy. But we will never achieve control over our own happiness if we do not invest in our own fulfillment, avoiding above all letting ourselves be manipulated by external forces. Life usually brings us many stones on our personal paths, on our existential map. But avoiding them, removing them from the ground to walk our way in peace, depends on us. Of our vital force, of our motivation. Fatalists and those who feel determined by external agents will always feel manipulated by others, almost forced to live a “planned” life. And no one can be happy in this way … It is worth a try.
Coto courtesy of Roger Hall
