Name: How control shapes your life
Uploaded: 2025-07-22T17:23:08.000Z
Duration: 4 min 14 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

I mean, no, I got lucky with this promotion.

I was at the right place at the right time.

Bestie, it sounds like you have an external locus of control.

So, locus of control is the extent to which one feels in control of the events that influence their lives.

If you have an internal LOC, you believe your life is influenced by your own actions and efforts.

But if you have an external LOC, it means you believe your life is controlled by fate, luck, or powerful others.

Okay, so, if I have an internal LOC, I would believe maintaining my health is in my control, and I'd choose things like eating healthy and exercising regularly.

Exactly, Bestie, but since you have an external LOC, you believe health is mostly about genetics and that no matter what you do, it's out of your hands.

In a research study by Harvard University, a broad range of studies over the past 50 years have suggested that internal LOC is an important construct to physical and psychological health.

When we feel like we can exert control, we demonstrate better immune responses, cardiovascular functioning, physical strength, increased longevity, increased life satisfaction, decreased anxiety, and decreased depressive symptoms.

Okay, so people with internal LOC take more responsibility for their lives and actions, and thus are able to better themselves and their health.

But taken to extremes, I mean, that has to be dangerous, right?

Like, if you have too much internal locus of control, that can lead to delusions of grandeur.

Too much external locus of control, and you don't have any accountability.

Okay, well, I assume you have other studies you want to summarize very quickly to make me change my mind.

Okay, so they did a study on soldiers after combat exposure, and regardless of how severe the battles were, those who had external LOC were more likely to develop PTSD.

Most likely because the perception of a life threat coupled with a sense of powerlessness against it totally messed them up.

The soldiers who had an internal LOC, however, were less likely to develop PTSD because they believed there are ways they can protect themselves from the threats to their lives and had more natural resilience.

If you are a nurse with a high internal LOC, you're more likely to be vulnerable to guilt and shame when you're treating your patients because the loss of a patient can feel like a personal failure because those nurses feel more responsible for their actions and the outcome of those actions.

Okay, so then it sounds like the ideal is pairing an internal locus of control with radical acceptance of truly what is within one's own control or not.

Like, you can't control a lucky break, but you can control how prepared you are for it and how much you're exposing yourself to opportunities for it to happen.

Couldn't have said it better myself if you were me.

Okay, well, you know, I did work hard and I do deserve the promotion, but I did happen to be in the right circumstances to get it.

We love learning about a new thing.  Balanced, internal versus external.

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