When things are bugging you, it’s well worth hopping to it and working on this quick, simple task about your locus of control. That’s locus, not locust, and I promise not to plague you with any more bad jokes based on the similarity between the two. ;-)

What is locus of control?

It’s all to do with how much control you have over something - I use it a lot with clients when looking at things they can do to improve their health, fitness or wellbeing, and in particular when discussing stress management. That’s because one of the main aspects of feeling stressed is that we can feel out of control - anything that helps to tip the scales back in our favour a little bit can be helpful.

There are two parts to your locus of control:

1. External locus - This is the stuff that’s impacting your health, fitness or stress levels that you have no control over. You can’t change it or do anything about it.

2. Internal locus - This is the stuff that you absolutely can do something about; the things you have the power to change.

Taking back control

For the following task, I’ve used stress as the example, partly because as I’ve already mentioned, long-term stress is often connected with feeling out of control, and partly because I know many of us are finding things challenging right now.

You can use it for any health, fitness or wellbeing goal you have though, and in fact, in any aspect of your life where you want to make some changes.

Step 1: Identify the things not in your control

There will always be things we can’t do anything about. With someone struggling with stress, this might be things like:

• Health issues for a loved one

• An existing medical condition of their own

• The state of the economy and possibly even the financial situation of the company you work for

• What the housing market is doing if you’re trying to sell your house

• A worldwide pandemic of a previously unheard of virus

Make a list of the things that could affect your goal that you feel you can’t do anything about.

Step 2: Practice acceptance

I’m not saying this is easy and it won’t work all the time, but if there are things you can’t control or do anything about, there’s no point worrying about them. I’m well aware that this isn’t how stress and anxiety works - it’s not rational and we can worry about things when we know there’s no need. It is still worth practising the art of acceptance though. The same goes for health too - our age, gender, genetics and more can all affect our health and we can’t control them, so we just have to keep practising acceptance that that’s the case.

The simple act of making the list of these things can help you to realise that they’re not within your power and help you to begin letting go some of the worries you have about them. Practising acceptance of them does also, in a strange way, give you more control over them, proving that nothing is truly out of your power to influence positively.

Step 3: Focus on your internal locus

Now it’s time to make your list of the things that are within your control; the things you can do something about to help you achieve your goal. This is the foundation of all of the work we do here at balance - recognising that so much of our health and wellbeing is within our reach by doing the right things. There’s plenty of research to show that the more in control you feel, the better you feel about your wellbeing - you start to see yourself as the pilot of your own destiny.

For stress, this might be things such as exercise, practising coping mechanisms like meditation or breathing techniques, getting into nature, listening to your favourite music and so on.

Whatever your goal, write your list now. Start it as broad as possible - no idea is a bad idea, just get it down as it may well come in useful.

You’ve now got an action plan of things you can do to help yourself, which can feel incredibly empowering.

It can also feel a little overwhelming, as you might have a number of things on your list and not know where to start. Here’s my advice on how to deal with this:

1. Pick the easiest thing on the list to do first

2. Focus on this one thing until you feel you’re on top of it, before picking the next easiest, and so on.

Picking something easy guarantees a quick win, and quick wins will give you a good boost of dopamine, providing the motivation to move onto the next one and keep the ball rolling. It’s that snowball effect; you start small and once it’s rolling, it keeps picking up pace and size and all of a sudden, it’s no longer difficult to do these helpful things, in fact, it’s hard to stop doing them and you feel great!

We’re often tempted to go with the biggest change first, or the one we feel the most pressure to change, like we think that’s what others would expect us to work on, but start simple and get into the habit of being successful.

Step 4: Maintaining momentum

Changing just one or two things on your list might be enough to help you achieve what you’re after, so it’s entirely up to you how many things you work on over time - it’s all about finding the right balance for you. Do consider that it’s always good to have a goal and to be challenging yourself - it’s what gives us the motivation to improve.

If you do happen to master all of the things on your internal locus list, you can always revisit your external locus list and see if there’s anything on there that you now feel you have more power to be able to change for the better..

Coming back to this task frequently and over time, gradully building the size of your internal locus list will allow you to feel like you are more in control of your own destiny. And with more control, comes less stress and a feeling of balance.