Are you the driver or the passenger?

You know how when you’re in a car riding “shotgun” and the driver’s going dangerously fast, you press your foot against the floor really hard as if there was a brake pedal there?

When someone else has the controls you’re along for the ride. If the driver makes a risky move, there’s not much you can do.

How is this relevant to your life? Well, let’s talk about “locus of control.”

If you feel you have no control over the events in your life, in psychological terms that would be called having an external locus of control. When things don’t go as you wish, you might blame bad luck, injustice, or even “Mercury in Retrograde.” On the other hand, with an internal locus of control you feel that you, yourself, are responsible for outcomes. And if not the outcome itself, your response to it. Think of it as responsibility.

Even when you have specific goals and well-thought out plans things may not work out as you intend. Perhaps you had some internal obstacles you couldn’t foresee…not your fault. Or there was some sort of glitch that interfered when you were just tooling along perfectly, like road work that caused a detour and added minutes to your journey. Again, no one to blame. The road workers hadn’t come up with an elaborate plan just to frustrate you.

Life doesn’t always seem to comply with our wishes and our best intentions often go astray. These times are opportunities. Use them as lessons to either prevent similar future problems that might arise in the future, or to practice letting go of expectations and focusing on all the things that are right in your life.