My Internal Locus of Control

As a kid, whenever I got in trouble, I would do the most logical thing available to me in order to protect myself.  I would put on my most innocent face followed by stating:

"Kassidy made me do it."

or

"It's Hannah's fault."

Yes, Kassidy and Hannah are my younger sisters.  And yes, this made complete sense, even if it wasn't completely Hannah's fault or even if Kassidy didn't actually make me do it.  Without fail, each time I employed these excuses as a means of protection, my mom or dad would explain to me that no one can make me do anything and my actions are not the fault of someone else.  Eventually I learned that I am the only person with the responsibility of claiming the consequences of my actions.  And life went on.  

Then when I got older, whenever I got offended or angry I would justify my seemingly uncontrollable emotions by stating:

"So-and-so made me this angry."

or

"It's this person's fault that I'm so offended."

Again, this way of thinking made complete sense.  In fact, it was better than complete sense, it was obvious that these people were responsible for my emotions.  Without their senseless, offensive, or rude actions there would be no reason for me to feel the way I was.  I understood that I was responsible for my own actions, but since some of my emotions were based on the actions of others, I was not responsible for those.  Fortunately, I had smart parents who again did their best to teach me that my emotions were yet another thing I had complete control of and responsibility over.

By no means am I an expert at controlling my emotions.  I am so far away from perfect that it oftentimes makes me laugh.  Sometimes my emotions will have run so far away from me that it takes a great deal of time to wrangle them back in and discover what actually set them off in the first place.  Yet, regardless of what sets them off, I am the one who gets to choose what my emotions are.

Last week I had an interesting experience in regards to choosing my emotions.  In fact, in a non-proud way, I'm still surprised and impressed with how well I could control my emotions when I made the decision that I would.  It was my mom who let me know that there had been a misunderstanding on my blog.  She was livid and encouraged me to go take a look at it before too long.  Perhaps it was having this warning and short period of time to think before seeing the actions of a stranger that allowed me to control something as intangible and fleeting as the emotion of offence.  Before reading what had been said about me, I made the simple decision to treat this person (and eventually any other person) with kindness and that I would not let the actions of another person control my emotions.  This made for such an interesting growing experience for myself, I'm actually beginning to feel grateful that I was able to pass through a situation like that.

I'm grateful that I could learn my own strength and realize that I do hold the power of controlling my own emotions, even when it may seem impossible.

I'm grateful that I have friends who made it easier to control my emotions by standing beside me and sharing their own kindness with me.

I'm grateful that I have the power to choose and decide things for myself.  Even after all the hubbub, I do not regret the choices I've made and what's even better is, I don't regret how I chose to handle last week.

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