Locus of Control Series – Part 6: Taking Control of Your Life

Your Reality – Your Personal Needs & Wants, Personal Values & Standards

We are resuming this newsletter from last month, continuing our Locus of Control discussion – Internal and External – and how that affects you.

For a quick overview, when you operate from the Internal Locus, you are taking complete control of your life.  Note: this does not mean the life of anyone else!  This means you work with yourself only and don’t try to change others – you have no rules for other people in relationships – just your own healthy boundaries.  You only control what is controllable – yourself, your emotions, your time, money, energy, your health (to a certain degree), etc.   And, you don’t waste your time or your energy in trying to control or change events outside of your influence.

Last month we covered more in depth: Living In Your Reality and Inviting Others You’re your Reality, including:

1. Living in your reality is about creating your desired reality vs. living in others reality.

• • Things to be aware of when you invite others into your reality

1. People will always test/challenge it, so you need to be clear

• • You must have strong healthy boundaries that you maintain with goodwill and grace – its not about offending or pleasing anyone else, but rather about maintaining the environment that will ensure your success

3. We covered guidelines for inviting and including others in your positive reality, including

1. • Never ever let anyone make decisions for you
   • Determine ahead of time what behavior you will and will not accept from others
   • Don’t let anyone mistreat you – and, you determine the guidelines for what qualifies as mistreatment, including areas of communication styles, life-style choices, core values, how you define respect and disrespect, etc.
   • Men and women will approach these guidelines differently

4. We also discussed how to handle the situations when someone crosses these guidelines

This month we are looking at:

1. 1. Your Needs and Wants
   2. Personal Cored Values
   3. Standards

YOUR NEEDS & WANTS

When you are operating from the place of Internal Locus of Control, it automatically places your needs and wants as a priority.  This is due to the fact that you are aware that you are the only one responsible for your life and consequently are responsible for your own happiness, attainted by meeting your needs and wants.

We live in a world where we are not taught how to prioritize our own needs in a healthy and constructive way.  Many people are shy, and even paralyzed by their fear, when it comes to putting themselves first, often intimidated by what others will think.  Which results in passive aggressive behavior, and hinders them from going for what they really want.  They worry that others will judge them as needy, greedy, arrogant, selfish – any number of things – showing disapproval.  And are fearful of inconveniencing other people by asking for what they really want.  While it is just the opposite – the people who go after what they desire and ask for what they want are regarded as powerful and having clarity.  And it is these very people who generally always get their needs met – especially when they have learned to accomplish this with tact and grace.

It is important that you never feel guilty for putting your needs first.  The best example of this is when we fly – we are required to put the oxygen mask first on ourselves before we assist others – in other words – meet our own needs first.  This results in the best chance of survival for everyone.  And the same applies to each of us in our individual lives.  To be as effective as possible, we must take care of our needs and wants first.  Why?  Very simply because we cannot give to others what we don’t already have.  Again, this can be done with kindness to ourselves as well as others.

When we are talking about getting our needs met effectively there are a several things we must know:

• 1^st, we need to know what our needs are
• 2^nd, we need to know why we have these needs
• 3^rd, we need to know how to proceed in meeting them

In order to do the above, it is important to take a look at your personal values.

PERSONAL CORE VALUES

Your values define what is most important and most “valuable” to you in your life.  They help determine how you prioritize your decisions, including your time, money and energy, by pointing out what you believe in and stand for.

Your individual standards are based on your personal values and impact/inform your ideas, thoughts, plans, actions, and behaviors.

For example, if you value integrity, you most likely believe in being reliable and honest, and feel that it is important to speak truthfully.  When you don’t speak up, you tend to feel disappointed in yourself as well as somewhat compromised.  Because you value integrity, one of your personal standards might be to never lie, even if it could possibly cause short-term discomfort or the truth could really be hurtful to someone.

A key to living a fulfilling life is to know and honor your personal core values.  These values and standards are so important that they are reflected in the quality of all aspects of your life professionally and personally – including your relationships, your communication, and your work/career.

Some values and standards are internal and others are external.  The external values and standards are imposed on us from sources outside of us.  Because of these external values and standards, when you are not meeting and fulfilling your own needs, you will tend to experience life as unfulfilled, complicated, hard, even an ongoing struggle.

When we deviate from our personal core values, we tend to feel dissatisfied with ourselves.  And from that place we tend to make decisions that we regret, because the decisions were not based on our true core values.  Once you map out your core values, you will find what you believe in and stand for, and then it will be easier to meet your needs because you have healthy pride in doing that.  As opposed to feeling guilty or bad for attempting to put yourself first and meet your needs.

On our Zoom Meeting Call next Wednesday we will do an exercise to assist in finding your Personal Core Values.  To prepare for this, please ask yourself the following questions:

1. What do you place importance on in your life?  And why?
2. What behaviors in others, or stories tend to be the most inspiring to you?  And why?
3. Among your accomplishments, in both your personal and professional areas, what things are you most proud of?  And why?
4. What are examples of behaviors that make you sad (or angry)?  And why?

STANDARDS

Now I want you to think about the standards that you currently live by, and I have a couple of questions for you:

1. Are they your own standards, or set by someone else?
2. Now that you’ve identified your core values, do you genuinely feel like you are living up to your core values?

There’s a good chance that some, if not many, of your current standards, are from outside sources.  And there would be a good chance that they are not aligned with your core values!  In other words, your daily behavior and decisions may be influenced by someone else’s core values – the media, family members, work, movies and music – from anyone and anything in our society that you are hearing and listening to.  It is important that you are aware of this and acknowledge it.

Some of these standards may be counterproductive or even detrimental to your desires and life purpose.  With this in mind, its time to take a deep look at the personal standards you’ve set for yourself, and figure out which ones are and are not serving your best interest.  From this place you can start making adjustments, erasing the ones that do not support you.

The standards you create will direct your life towards what you what to achieve.  Because personal standards are personal, this requires looking deep within to understand what really drives you, what you stand for, what your principles and beliefs are – in all areas of your life.  Getting to these takes time.  It can’t be done in one sitting, or even in a day.  It is an exercise that you need to take your time with.  Once you have your standards outlined, then live with them for a while and feel free to continue to adjust them – gaining deeper insight into what truly drives you.

When your high standards are set, you must stay on top of them in order to feel fulfilled and successful.  For many people, this can be where things begin to get difficult, and it becomes seductive just to give up, rather than stick with your inner fire and what truly drives you.  Because so many people are unclear about their core values, they settle for the easiest path, or the newest fad.

Next month we will dive deeper into assisting you with working on your standards, how to effectively implement and live with them, as well as cover healthy boundaries that will help you maintain your standards.

MY INVITATION TO YOU

This month as we enter 2022, I’m inviting you to step into your new year more aware of your Personal Core Values and the Standards that are driving them.  I would love to hear from you about the changes this awareness is making in your life.

I am holding you in my heart.