Locus of Control

Is your locus of control internal or external?

Your perception of where control lies can have an impact on your viewpoint and the way you interact with your environment. 

Control: an easy word to understand, yet a challenging word to actually deal with. We have people that think they control everything; others that think they are controlled by the world around them and pretty much everything in between. Control can be defined as the power to determine outcomes by directly influencing actions, people and events. When we look at it that way, we can begin to see that there is no way to control everything in our lives. I'm not saying we cannot control anything, but put in the context of that definition; we have to step back and really analyze what we can and cannot control.

The word 'control' becomes even more interesting when we have the word locus, before it. You see, locus is defined as a position, point or place, or more specifically, a location where something occurs. A person's locus of control may be internal or external.

Internal vs. External Locus of Control

People who base their success on their own work and believe they control their life have an internal locus of control. In contrast, people who attribute their success or failure to outside influences have an external locus of control.

For example, let's say you're a person with an internal locus of control and you get a promotion at work or achieve some other type of success. You will probably attribute that positive end result to the work you put in. In other words, your success was a direct result of your hard work.

If, on the other hand, you have an external locus of control, you might attribute that promotion or success to external or environmental factors, such as luck, fate, timing, other people or some type of divine intervention.

Let's use the same example and say that you were denied a promotion. If your locus of control is internal, you would find a way to blame yourself for the perceived failure. If your locus of control is external, it would be easy, even natural, to blame outside sources beyond your control.

Click here to view a video on the circle of influence and the circle of concern.