The last few months I have been tweeting out thoughts about the laws that govern success in business and life. Our opportunity is to learn those laws and leverage them to the best of our ability in order to generate better performance and better successful outcomes.
Today, we are going to deal with The Law of Control.
The Law of Control basically says that you will build your own self-esteem to the degree that you feel you have control in your career and life. Another thing important to learn is that most of these success laws also have inverse effects. For instance, you will also suffer negative feelings in your self-esteem to the degree you feel you are not in control of your career and life. When you feel things are in a downward spiral or circumstances are controlled by other people or random circumstance, you suffer negative effects. So, if you are well organized in your life, it gives you positive feelings of being prepared and ready. If you are disorganized in your life, it’s a compound feeling of not being prepared or secure in being able to locate useful tools or that you have your stuff together.
The Law of Control basically says that you will build your own self-esteem to the degree that you feel you have control in your career and life.
Some of this is also determined by where the majority of the stability of your own control is located. Psychologists call this “locus of control.” If you feel you personally make the decision that determine the direction of your life, you have an “internal locus of control” and then also If you feel something or someone externally controls you or forces your actions, you have an “external locus of control.” This is really important to discover. We have in depth assessments we use in our leader coaching to locate when the balance of their locus of control is. It’s important to note that people with an internal locus of control tend to be more low-stressed type people and people with an external locus of control tend to be more high-stressed type people. Why is this? It’s because external locus of control people feel something external is controlling their emotions and responses while internal locus of control people feel they themselves are in control.
To better process, understand and utilize the law of control, it’s important to recognize these three keys for this law:
1. Change is inevitable, unavoidable and is accelerating What can you do about it? Up your game by having well thought out and detailed plans on what you are going to do in case you need contingency. Spend time thinking about what could possibly happen down the road and set some plans and goals to offset your fear of change. There is no need to fear if you have a strategy for yourself going forward. I promise it will make you feel better and more secure just by doing the exercise. Ask yourself: With this coming change, what is the worst thing that could happen? Go from there and be sure to gut out the answer and your course of action.
2. Controlled change is better than uncontrolled change You are always better off doing things pro-actively rather than re-actively. So, you need to think in terms of making some course corrections rather than having to face U-turns. Every voyage whether by ship or by plane face air turbulence and wave resistance that tries to guide the ship off course, but instead of making hard turns one way or the other, the navigator simply makes small course corrections and the passengers hardly even notice. As a leader, you owe it to your people to make course correction they hardly notice rather than bumpy turbulence or hard left turns. Your future self will thank you for this as well.
3. Take control of your career and life by taking control of your thought life Thoughts turn to words and words turn to actions. So, it simply makes sense to start with your thoughts since they direction most of your actions. You need to think and talk in terms of what you want your life and career to be not the opposite. If you are one of the people who think what you say to yourself or to others doesn’t matter, let me kindly disagree with you. Your destiny in is in line with your habits which, yes you guessed it, get formed by your actions, words and thoughts. Try reading some affirmations and then saying them until you change your thought pattern. Never forget, you believe what you say more than what anyone else says. Remember the law of control where your thoughts and mouth are concerned.
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