Why Is This Happening TO Me?
…is it really?
Goal: Discuss the failure of the blame game
Besides obvious qualifications for a role, many HR interviews initially try to access one thing, “Does the candidate have internal or external locus of control?”
Why is that important to an employer?
An employer wants people that are drivers. People that have an internal focus will look at a problem, problem that might have been created by them, and ask themselves how to solve it.
People with internal locus of control believe that if they can create a problem they can also solve it. They are not looking for someone else to solve the problem for you.
That is powerful.
You might not be there yet. So how do you change the focus of control?
Next time you hear yourself saying, “Why is this happening to me?” STOP. Pause and say, “That is interesting.” Why do I believe that someone else can solve this problem? PAUSE.
Next..
Say to yourself, “What is this problem/situation trying to teach me?”
This creates a giant shift from external to internal control.
Let me tell you a story…
Many years ago when I was a young engineer working in steel industry, I was surrounded by much older people. They loved to pick on me. Constantly I was the butt of their jokes.
They used to tell me that if they did not mess with me they did not love me. I did not feel loved.
BUT I spent some time thinking about the situation and concluded that the problem was not them BUT me.
I was allowing their insecurities to test my weaknesses. They were looking for weak spots that they can exploit and probe.
Bingo…
After I realized that, I started looking forward to their attempts to mess with me. I would quickly identify the weakness they uncovered, looked for ways to learn the lesson, and quickly modify my belief/performance/systems.
I basically took their attacks and used them to improve myself. So instead of mopping about wondering why it was happening to me I learned from it as if it was happening FOR me.
On a more recent note, last week was horrible in Houston. We lost power. We lost water. We had a busted pipe. We lost internet service.
It was easy to feel down when you are either cold, lack a shower, or can not do your work. Very easy to get pissed off and wonder why is this happening to me.
BUT I did not.
All I can control is what I focused on. When the power was out, I looked for a place to go and stay with friends. When the water pressure was low, we managed with less water. When the pipe burst we shut off the water. When we lost the internet…man all hell broke loose. Just kidding. We used our phones to access it.
The moral was to do the best you can in any situation and think about next. This is why I went directly to the plumbing company and made a personal appeal for an appointment to fix my broken pipe.
Instead of wondering why me I focused on the next step. The energy spent in worrying was spent in doing something constructive.
My sixteen cents….(this is what I earned from Medium.com for Jan. 2021)
I got to go…my future self alarm went off
PRODUCT LIST 2021
My first product of the year is the t-shirt with a circle. It can be purchased at
https://teespring.com/be-adaptive?pid=212&cid=5819
My second product is MyLin app. It can be viewed following the link below:
My Third product is a clean design T-shirt available on Amazon:
