When a Dead Fish Finds Its Locus of Control
I might say, it is always hard to cope up with the post effect of failing to meet the expectation. It’s like a hard nut to crack especially when it comes to meet an acceptance. Some might go nuts, some might try to let go and some might just tend to ignore. It also takes time to better understand the cause and I believe everyone could have his/her own process to digest, tone down and move on. And so do I.
A lot of unwanted things happened during first quarter in 2020. I was struggling from unstoppable losses. I failed to meet both my own and other’s expectations. None of my three important aspects in life went smooth. Taking asides from any force majeure (Jakarta’s heavy flood and global coronavirus outbreak), I found it difficult to control things that I was supposedly able to control. Hence, the post effect was all about blaming myself, regretting every decision I made, and even worse, weaning off few people who were essentially offering a help.
Honestly speaking, it took a long time for me to get rid of this. Yes, I was one typical person who would go nuts at the beginning but then let go and eventually ignore. Till one day, a good friend of mine relentlessly figured out that I had a serious problem with locus of control and I had to fix the root!
Wait, what was that?
Everyone knows the fact that we can’t control things beyond our control. We can’t even expect people to control beyond our control. Therefore, it doesn’t matter about what will come next in future. But instead, it does matter about how we can prevent that to happen and how we can minimise any damages to come. In other words, it does matter most about how we can solely take steps and flip the situation.
Locus of Control
This psychological literature is pretty unfamiliar to most people, even though, once defined, is commonly understood. It refers to the extent to which people feel that they have control over events that influence their lives. A simple question to understand this concept is like:
“When you are dealing with a challenge in your life, do you feel that you have control over the outcome? Or do you believe that you are simply at the hands of outside forces?
It puts everyone in two categories: internal and external. People with “internal” locus of control clearly believed that it was essentially up to them to succeed/fail. Meanwhile, people with the “external” believed that luck, fate, or circumstance would more likely determine whether or not they could succeed/fail.
Again, he once told me I was lack of having a locus of control. Neither was the internal nor the external. The problem was that I chose to be a passive bystander by not taking steps and flip the situation. Instead, I acted like a dead fish swimming with the stream. I was not a kind of “internal” who would go for an extra mile to think of any possibilities or any faster process to move on. Else, I was not even a kind of “external” who would minimise any damages by avoiding unhealthy circumstances, trusting luck or fate to take part in every decision I’d make.
Stumbling upon this truth, I soon realised that it took no good to remain silent and follow the stream or even get caught up in the flow of life. Rather than viewing our self as simply a passive bystander (a.k.a dead fish), think about any actions that we can take that will have an impact on the outcome.
Why no good? We can only control what we can control. Rather than staying silent while swimming with the stream, we can choose to enjoy what nature brings or rest for a while at riverside. We can still choose to find one good side of getting caught up then opt to take in or step out from the flow of life.
For instance, if your business drops significantly because of the coronavirus outbreak, you can choose to take an “internal” control to cut down the operating expenses (opex) or as an “external” control to change how you view situations like first blaming the pandemic but then feel less stressed and let go since most business owners might experience the same as well.
Or another unwanted lovey-dovey story when a man decides to cut off his relationship with his significant. She could ask for any closures and probably decide to fix the roots (internal control). As owning an external control, she could bitterly voice that whether it’s a fate that two could no longer be together or his decision will potentially be a great loss for him. (Just my two cents!)
