Are You in Charge of Your Life? (Part 2)
Last time, we talked about what is called a “locus of control”, or whether we believe internal or external factors have the most control over our lives. Today we’ll be talking about why some people feel less in control, and what can be done to change that.
Like other traits and belief systems we have, our locus of control is affected by messages we receive directly and indirectly from others and from our own life experiences. For example, did people in your family seem to believe that their situations were fairly hopeless and unchangeable by their decisions, or were they more likely to feel that things like hard work and good decisions could get someone out of a bad situation? When you went through positive and negative experiences as a child, did you believe that these events were primarily due to good and bad luck or your own decisions? These early roots can begin patterns that stay with us throughout our lives.
Research also suggests that our early bonds with our parents and other early life experiences influence our locus of control, with things like parents frequently being distracted by TV correlating with an external locus of control and frequent positive interactions between parent and child correlating to an internal locus of control (See reference here).
Regardless of your locus of control, it is clear to most of us that we do not have control over the families we are born into or our childhood experiences. So how can we change how we see the world now, as adolescents or adults? First, realize that you can. You may not have had much control over how your original mindset developed, but over time you can develop a more internal locus of control and feel that you have more power in your life. Here are some tips (with some content borrowed from this page on Psychcentral):
Focus on things you do have control over. You cannot control every situation, but you can often influence the outcome or what you do after it.
Focus on things you can learn from an experience rather than ways you feel critical of yourself after an experience (e.g. can you study differently next time, or choose different words in an argument?)
Have a support system. This is never bad advice. In this case, it can help by having other people who can help you feel more empowered and in control in a given situation.
Change always takes time and practice. Results will not be immediate, but over time you can feel like you are not only at the mercy of external situations and people, and instead feel that you have more power to live the life you want.
