060 | Things You Can’t Control

Often we try to control things that are outside our control or we completely give our power away and believe that our lives are at the mercy of external forces. Both extremes are unhealthy and can lead to undesired results in your finances.

In this episode, we talk about both extremes, specific things you can’t control in your life, specific things you can control in your life, and some examples of how all of it relates to your money.

Lightly edited transcript appears after the show notes.

Topics Discussed

• internal vs. external locus of control
• things you can and can’t control in your life
• examples of how your thoughts about control relate to your money

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Resources mentioned

Lifestyle Freedom Starter Guide

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Lightly Edited Transcript

Hey friend. Welcome back to the show. I hope you are doing well having an amazing day so far. I am super excited to get into our topic today because we are talking about control, and specifically we’re talking about the things you can control and the things you can’t. So there are two extremes when thinking about control. On one extreme, are the people who believe they should be able to control everything in life. And on the other, are the people who believe they have no control and life is basically happening to them. This concept of whether you believe your circumstances are within your control or purely a result of external forces is called the locus of control, and the two extremes are the internal locus of control and the external locus of control. And so when you have an internal locus of control, he believes, things are within your control everything that happens is a result of your actions. On one hand you believe that with hard work and determination you can do anything you want to do, you’re self motivated, you’re a go getter, you know, all of these great things, But you also tend to blame yourself for any failures or missteps, or anything that doesn’t go the way you’d like. You take responsibility for and beat yourself up for situations you literally have no control over or that aren’t your fault, and chronic apologizes come to mind like people who apologize for things that there’s no reason to apologize for. For example, like, I walk into the break room at work and sometimes there would already be people there getting the food or drink, and they’d apologize because I was waiting, or you know if you’re coming down the aisle at the store, and someone’s standing in front of a shelf that you’re waiting to get to, because they’re doing their own shopping, and they apologize. It makes me cringe inside every time because you’re basically apologizing for existing like if the default word out of your mouth is sorry stop, right, save that for when there’s actually something to apologize for. But anyway, That was the internal locus of control. And now when you have an external locus of control you believe that everything happens as a result of external circumstances. So things are a matter of luck or fate. You may blame others when things don’t go the way you want. You don’t believe your efforts make much difference in your life, you believe that everything in your life is at the mercy of other people, especially people in power or authority. So it’s your spouse or your parents or your boss or the government or you know whatever that’s why you haven’t been able to do XYZ. But you’ll also be less likely to beat yourself up for things not going the way that you hoped or planned, and you’ll be less likely to view those things as indicative of some sort of shortcoming in yourself. As you can see though both extremes are pretty unhealthy, like there are literally always things that are outside your control, there’s no way for you to control every single outcome, right. By the same token, everything can’t be someone else’s fault. It can’t always be luck or chance you do have some power in your own life. Realistically, people generally don’t fall at the extremes like most people are somewhere in the middle, although you may lean more to one side or the other, like you may have a predominantly internal locus of control, but not so far as to believe that everything is within your control. There are things on both sides, right things you can control and things you can’t. So let’s talk first about things you can’t control in your life, especially as it relates to money. You can’t control the economy or the stock market, or the government, you can’t control your spouse or significant other, although many of us try right and let’s talk about that for a second because you may try to make your person, be the way you want them to be, and try to change them rather than accepting them as they are, and this often comes up in the context of money when you learn new information about how to manage your money, and you want your spouse to immediately get on board. That was me in the beginning of my family’s financial journey, like a lot all this new information about money and paying off debt early and financial independence, and I was trying to get my husband to see that, we just need to do x, and if he will stop spending on Y, then we could do Z right and he wouldn’t have. And the problem was I can’t control him. You can’t control your spouse or significant other, either. You can’t make them value the same things as you, you can’t control how they spend or manage money. You can’t make them think, the way you do. And think about this, you’ve had the opportunity to learn this new information and digested and then decide that you want to act on it, your spouse may not be there yet. One of my coaches always says you have to give people the dignity of their own process, so not you pushing your beliefs in touch on them, right sure share the information you’ve learned, talk to them about your thoughts and desires and all that, but allow them to reach their own decisions. You also can’t control people other than your spouse. So we try to control what others think of us all the time, and we perform so we continue to receive their validation. And in the context of money, this may mean that when someone in your family asks for money you give it to them, even when you don’t want to, or maybe even sometimes when you don’t have it or you spend money on things or experiences you don’t want to because you want to appease a friend. Sometimes we don’t have the money to do the things we want to do because it’s going to someone else and the things they want to do. Sometimes the most helpful thing you can do for a person is not to give the specific help they’re seeking. And it’s not to say that, giving your friends and family money or helping them is automatically a bad thing, but recognize where it’s coming from. This also may show up at work, where you’re taking on tasks beyond your job description, or not setting boundaries or micromanaging people you supervise. Maybe you’re overworking and try to get validation from your colleagues or the partners, or your boss or supervisor if you’re in a different setting of the firm. Maybe you’re trying to get a raise or bonus or promotion. Be honest with yourself, that this is what you’re doing and be clear that you can do all the things and go above and beyond and still not get the validation or the raise or the promotion, because you can’t control other people. You can do everything that’s expected of you, and then some, and your boss can still think is not enough. But the main point I want you to see is that anytime you’re people pleasing, where you’re doing things you don’t want to do to try to get other people to think or feel a certain way about you, or maybe to get them to do something you don’t want them to do or you do want them to do. You’re trying to control them, right, we don’t typically think of it this way but it’s manipulative. And that’s not to say that you don’t have some level of influence over other people. You do, right, we all do, especially with people closest to us. But there’s a difference between you, influencing someone to do something and you trying to control them and make them do something. So we’ve talked about the things you can’t control what about the things you can control. There are so many things that you have complete control over. First, you can always control the way you think and feel about a situation, there are different ways to view just about any situation, and we talked earlier about friends and family asking for money for example, you can choose to think that you’re obligated to give them money. You can choose to think that the person asking is selfish or irresponsible. You can choose to think that you’re glad you can help them in their time of need, and so many countless other thoughts, each thought will produce a different emotion, but you get to choose. And the thought you choose will call your experience of the situation. You can also control the decisions you make. Again, using the asking for money scenario as an example, you can make decisions about how you’ll handle these kinds of requests, ahead of time. You can decide that you don’t lend money at all. You can decide that you will lend up to a certain amount, you know you can decide that you’ll do everything possible to meet whatever requests people bring. And I don’t necessarily recommend that but you could decide that if you want it to. You can also control your actions. So sticking with the asking for money example, even if you make a decision about request for money, you can choose not to honor it. You can fly off the handle and snap at the person who’s asking you can brainstorm with them about how they can come up with the money. Or you can ignore them, and I’m not advocating you do any of these things in particular, but just showing you some examples of actions you could take in response to someone asking for money, because that’s something you have control over. In every situation, there are things you can control. So identify and focus on those don’t spend time worrying about the things you can’t. And if this resonates with you and you want support as you work on the things you can control to reach your money goals, let’s set up some time to chat. Head to rho thomas.com slash coaching to schedule a call so we can talk about your specific situation. All right, so that’s it for this week, come connect with me on social media, let’s keep this conversation going. My handle is at I am rho Thomas on Instagram, and I’m rho Thomas on LinkedIn. If you haven’t already please subscribe to the show, leave me review. As I mentioned before, those things are super helpful and please continue to share the episodes with your friends who you think would benefit from this information. As we close out friend, I leave you with an adaptation of the serenity prayer. I pray the Lord will grant you the serenity to accept the things you can’t control the courage to change the things you can and the wisdom to know the difference. And as always, I pray that you continue to take steps to regain control of your time, build wealth and live the life of freedom and choice, you deserve. Talk to you later.