If you feel like you are in control of your life and your destiny, you could be a great entrepreneur. People with an internal locus of control generally feel this way. The opposite of this are people with an external locus of control. Those people have the feeling that life is happening to them. In other words, they feel that they have little control over their future and that the random or external events in life are the main causes of success or failure.
If you plan things in your life, believe you are where you are because of your actions, and see a direct link between your behavior and your success or failure in life, you may have an internal locus of control.
So how does one increase their internal locus of control? Here are three techniques you can use.
Don't blame others
Think back to moments that caused you grief. When you dropped a bag of groceries, who do you think was to blame? The time you reversed and crashed into another car. Was that the fault of someone in your car distracting you? If you performed poorly on an exam, was it because the teacher was a bad instructor?
We all have moments of distress in our lives, and how we justify the mistake says a lot about our locus of control. If you've been in similar situations to the ones described above, now think about how you could have avoided the situation. Did the shopping bag fall because it was poorly packed, or did you not transport it properly, poorly packed or not properly? When you reversed the car, was it because you let yourself be distracted instead of focusing on your effort to properly exit a parking space? Was your poor performance on the exam the result of not conforming to the teacher's instructing and that led to your poor results?
It's not about discovering the "truth" or feeling guilt in each of these situations. Instead, what is the mindset you resort to when a moment of need arises? You can increase your internal locus of control by learning to take responsibility for the outcome of a situation rather than blaming someone or something other than yourself.
Taking responsibility
Imagine your future goals and the path you would like to take to get there. Does that path consist of thoughts like “if this happens”, “I hope they will see my effort”, or “it will take some luck”? Then you have an external locus of control. You see future success in what you are trying to achieve as dependent on someone else or an event that has to take place.
To increase your internal locus of control, change your thoughts to “when I get this done”, “when they see my effort” or “determination, no luck will get me to my future goals”.
Embrace failure, mistakes and challenges
Unpleasant stoic Concepts: See failure as an opportunity to learn. Failure is never welcome, but it is very likely that it will happen sooner or later when we are trying to achieve something that is challenging. People with an external locus of control look at situations and the probability of failure. If they think there is even the slightest chance of failure, they will avoid the situation. But it is difficult to achieve much in life if the fear of failure drives you to avoid situations.
If you want to increase your internal locus of control, go out there and do something you know will fail. It can be something as simple as running a too long distance of 15 km. Or ask a waiter at a restaurant to have your meal prepared differently. Over time, you'll learn that trying isn't as bad as you thought it would be. And if you pick up after each failure and tell yourself that the failure was the result of your poor preparation, lack of good communication skills, or anything else you can improve on, you're on the right track to increasing your internal locus of control.
The stronger your internal locus of control, the more satisfaction you will find in life. You will no longer feel the need to blame others or be afraid to engage in interesting activities, and you will find that those around you will admire your self-esteem and how you are now the master of your destiny.
Sources ao EntPathWays (link), PsychCentral (link), VeryWellMind (link)
