Dr. Shadé Zahrai

You listen to these stories, of course you have empathy.

By the 10th time they're telling you this story, within a few months, you realize they're stuck in a cycle that is keeping them stuck.

When it comes to complaining, and I'll share what the attribute is in a moment, but when it comes to complaining, we don't realize this is a sign of a lack of self-trust.

Because we lack the trust that we have the ability to do something about the situation.

So what do we do?

Focus on what we cannot control and magnify it and complain about it.

Because it's easier to complain than to take ownership and do something.

When we keep reliving past hurts, things that have happened to us in the past, we're telling what's called a contamination story.

Jay, you mentioned earlier how every single person has lived through hardship.

Every single person.

And depending on the story that they tell themselves about that hardship, it determines how they feel about that hardship, whether they internalize that hardship and make it mean something about them, and then whether they feel empowered in their lives or the victim's.

And I'll come back to that story in a moment or the example of the hardships because I do have a really great case study for that.

But coming back to Bruno, what we discovered is that he had a very low level of what we call autonomy.

He felt like he didn't have the freedom to make choices.

He felt like he didn't have the ability to influence his outcomes.

And that's why he fixated on everything outside of his control.

This relates to what's called a locus of control.

So Jay, you have a locus.

I have a locus.

Everyone listening will have a locus of control, which comes from the Latin word location, which means where do you place the control in your life?