«LOCUS OF CONTROL»

        Ever have the sense of utter gloom? Your star sign is in the descendant and your horoscope warns you not to make decisions about money matters whilst steering clear of all activities requiring choice or intelligence. It’s logical isn’t it? After all you can’t be expected to control the cards fate deals you? The only path left open to you is to retire to bed with a good book and hope that the ceiling won’t fall in on you ...

Bad call!

All of us have negative experiences – days when the universe plays unfairly. We cannot do anything about the experience. We can however control our attitude. If I look at the event in terms of the difficulty of the task which confronts me and see my successes or failures in life in terms of luck then I have an external locus of control and I am going to be tempted to give up and become passive when the going gets tough. Psychologists call this learnt helplessness and it leads to a need to be rescued and a tendency to blame others for one’s lack of progress in life.

If on the other hand I believe that my efforts contribute to the outcome and that I create my own luck; if I believe that the hand of fate is offering me a challenge to test my ingenuity, then the locus of control is internal, and the task is likely to generate excitement and motivation.

So if you are reading this with the blankets pulled up to your anxious eye-brows, waiting for Venus to conjoin with Mercury and the Year of the Monkey to enter the equinox, why not instead attempt a dramatic leap out of bed and have at that ceiling before it has the opportunity to get you first?

Mind Matters is a regular Times column by Pamela Glyn, a Howick-based psychologist. Tel/Fax: 535-2224. Email: glynpsy@pl.net Web site: www.glyn-psychology.co.nz