The Locus of Control Theory - Sanatan Goyal

 Control,  most of us feel that we have a majority control over our daily endeavors. We believe that we have control over majority of our actions. We believe that we have control over majority of our decisions. But that is not at all true. We, over estimate our locus of control way too much.

Locus of Control can be defined as the circle of influence over our daily actions or decision

    Well imagine a scenario, You are looking forward to doing something. It could be anything, reading a book, writing a book, watching movies, series, playing sports or anything like that. You are on the verge of starting that activity and suddenly, your mother calls you. She instructs you to go to the market and buy some groceries. Morally and ethically obliged to listen to the person due to which you exist, you cannot deny her. You convince your brain that it is no problem and you can just simply do that activity afterwards.  

    You complete that task and then you are again on the verge of doing that activity, but then you accidentally glance at Instagram and that infamous red colour of this notifications. "Well, looks like someone wants to reach out to me, it must be important, let me just quickly get over with it", you think. You start with your DMs, then the stories, then the new posts of your friends and acquaintances and oh, you see an interesting reel telling how far will we reach from earth if Elon Musk's wealth is stacked up in coins. "That looks like an interesting piece of information", you exclaim. and then you fall into the constant loop of instant gratification. 

    Oh no, it has been an hour already, I need to get back to my work, I need to submit this report, or do that project or complete this homework, and well, that activity which I wanted to do, all down the drain.

Now, did you notice what just happened in the scenario? Effectively, our actions were being governed by the external factors present all around us. But then, at the end of the day, you sit down and think what you have done with your day because you saw some self improvement short on YouTube, and then think that, oh, I have control over my actions, why did I waste my day?! From this point in your brain, there are only two paths, either you are going to enter a serious mode and get control of your life, or you can either sit and cry that I am not able to take control.

 Being completely honest, both these paths actually lead to no where but back at the same track of again losing control. The key reason being that we think, that we have control, which unfortunately, we do not. Many of you might be disagreeing with me, however, it still does not affect the truth. Well then what is the truth, if we don't have control then should we just sit back and let the factors decide?

No, quite the opposite in fact. You are supposed to take control by understanding the difference between your apparent Locus of control and your actual Locus of Control. The apparent locus of control can be defined as the things we believe we have control over, and the actual Locus of control are the things we actually have control over. Keep one thing in mind which would help understanding this further

  Apparent Locus of Control  +  Actual Focus of Control  =  Broad Perceived Locus of Control

The first step towards this initiative is modesty in believing that I don't have control over anything at all. You have to have that mindset to actually take control of the things.  Now once you initiate this modesty, your sub conscious brain whose only work is to make sure of survival would believe that it doesnt have control and hence would frantically try to look for things that it actually has control over.

    Your sub conscious brain would do the job for you. Now once this process is initiated, consider the job done. As your brain would automatically find the things you have control over, as it would ignore all of the things included in the set of the delusional control for which the formula is:-

Apparent Locus of Control - Actual Locus of Control = Delusional Control.

Since all the delusional control is out, you automatically have the access to your actual Locus of Control and even have extra clarity in it as the entire Delusional control is subtracted from your broad perceived Locus of Control! This is proved in the following manner:-

Broad Perceived Locus of Control - Delusional Control = 2(Actual Locus of Control)

=> (Apparent Locus of Control + Actual Locus of Control) - (Apparent Locus of Control-Actual Locus of Control) = 2(Actual Focus of Control).

I call this "The Locus of Control Theory" and the final product being an extra clarity in your locus of control. Once, you know what you can control, you will be able to unlock you full potential in that particular field and don't have to feel bad about not having control over something as you know your true Circle of Influence.

- Sanatan Goyal