Maya Shankar

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.

I think by nature, we tend to define ourselves by what we do, by our labels, by our roles, right?

I'm a teacher, I'm a doctor, I'm a mother, I'm a member of my community.

The challenge is that when a big change happens, it can actually threaten that self-identity.

And this can leave you in a very paralyzed state because you feel not simply that you've lost the thing in this change moment, but you've also lost a fundamental sense of who you are.

I remember having this experience as a little kid.