Maya Shankar

So one thing that's really interesting is when we think about a negative change happening in our lives, it can often feel like an apocalypse of sorts, like a personal apocalypse, like the world we knew is no longer available.

And what's so interesting about the genesis of the word apocalypse is that it comes from the Greek word apocalypsis.

Apocalypsis actually does mean revelation.

And this etymology is instructive because it teaches us that while change can absolutely upend us, it can also reveal things to us, things about ourselves that were hidden from view until this moment, until the demands and stresses and novelty of our new environment

cast a light on a part of ourselves that either we weren't fully aware of, or we weren't attending to, or we just didn't have the wherewithal to try to improve.

And I have found this in so many moments in my life where a really bad thing happened and it did reveal something to me about

maybe habits of mind that weren't optimal or perspectives on the world that needed to be updated or beliefs I've been carrying my whole life that had to be challenged.

And that's a wonderful experience, you know, to have this force enter your life and encourage you to actually change the way that you see the world around you and the way you see yourself.

It is very common in the aftermath of a negative change to self-berate and to assume that we were the ones that caused this, even when in many situations, the situation was completely out of our control.

And whether or not we do this depends on

where our locus of control lies.

So psychologists have this concept.

If you have a really strong internal locus of control, you believe that you dictate outcomes, that you're in control of how your life turns out.

If you have a strong external locus of control, you believe that there's a lot of external factors that are determining how your life turns out.

So one mentality involves a very firm grip on the steering wheel in which you are the one

that is dictating things, and the other is a slightly more open-minded posture of, yes, I can control certain things, but the universe is actually controlling a lot of other things.

It turns out that when you have a stronger internal locus of control, when you feel that you're the one in charge, it can be associated with higher well-being because your life is filled with maybe more purpose or more meaning because you do feel like your inputs matter.

The downside of having that relationship with control is that when a really unexpected negative thing happens, your brain naturally thinks, well, this must be my fault.

If I was responsible for the good stuff, I must be responsible for the bad stuff.

And there's a huge freedom, actually, in adopting a more balanced view of how any person's life turns out.