If you could live one day of your life over, what day would you choose and why?
When I taught Business Ethics at our local community college, I used to ask my students this question. Their answers could be inspiring. The interesting thing about this exercise, to me, was the type of day they chose. Some chose to live a bad day over so that they could do things differently and “fix” it, and others chose a day that was really wonderful so they could experience it again. Which would you choose? Let me know in the comments.
There have been some days—and some years—that I would like to live over. And there are some I’d like to skip entirely. Have you ever felt like that?
Locus of Control
One of the concepts I taught was internal vs. external locus of control. People who have an internal locus of control tend to believe that they have control over what happens to them in life; and when things don’t go their way, they feel that there was probably something they could have done differently. With an external locus of control, people often feel they are at the mercy of outside forces and blame those forces for what happens to them rather than taking responsibility for their own actions.
In 1985 psychologist Philip Zimbardo wrote in Psychology and Life, “A locus of control orientation is a belief about whether the outcomes of our actions are contingent on what we do (internal control orientation) or on events outside our personal control (external control orientation).”
Internal vs. External
Locus of control can be illustrated in a continuum like this. where you typically fall somewhere along the line between internal and external. A person is rarely 100% either internal or external. In addition, your locus of control can vary with circumstances. It’s not something you’re born with. It often develops from the way you were raised and/or from your experiences.
For instance, when I got breast cancer it was completely out of my control, so I had an external reaction to the diagnosis. But, I had control over how I wanted to deal with the cancer—surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation. Some people choose entirely different ways to fight cancer. That part is internal—I was in control of that choice. You can deliberately change your locus of control if you find the need to and want to.
if you are interested in exploring Locus of Control more, here is one site that has a set of questions you can ask yourself to determine your own LOC and what it implies. I don’t have any connection to this school or website, just FYI.
Then There Was That One Year…
In general I have an internal locus of control. I believe that if I work hard at something I can succeed. I believe I have choices and take responsibility for those choices. But there was one year that challenged that internal locus of control. It was a year that I might have wanted to skip, were it not for my second daughter’s birth, which made that year a very special one in spite of the terrible things that occurred! Remember that point.
So many things happened that year that were completely out of my control that, for a time, I had a very external locus of control. I felt I was at the mercy of circumstances outside my ability to control. I felt stressed and helpless. It’s been a lot of years, so I am able to tell you what happened in a non-emotional way—but believe me, it’s taken a long time to get here.
Stress Upon Stress
Five days after our beautiful younger daughter was born, my older brother died. It was unexpected and heart wrenching for the entire family, of course. My parents were staying with us because of our new baby, and my brother’s family lived about an hour away. The next day, amidst dealing with funeral preparations with the family, our 2 1/2 year old swallowed a nickel that lodged in her throat. I wish I had the X-ray that showed it standing on its side in her throat—the doctor said if it tipped, she wouldn’t be able to breathe, so he sent us to the hospital. The ENT anesthetized her so they could remove it. But when they put her under, her throat relaxed and the nickel passed into her stomach. They were unable to retrieve it, but they assumed it would pass through her system.
The day of my brother’s funeral, my mother had a heart attack. Three days later she had a stroke and was in the hospital for a week. Two days after Mom got out, my father had surgery for prostate cancer, which had been previously scheduled. It was a time when I went from “nothing more could possibly happen,” to just waiting for the next shoe to drop. Very external. And stress built upon stress.
Shoes Dropping
Our daughter did not pass the nickel (my dad had a metal detector and her tummy was still beeping 9 days after she swallowed it), so she had to have endoscopic removal in our larger nearby city.
All these tragedies had happened within 10 days of our second daughter’s birth. And the shoes continued to drop. Within the next six months my husband lost his mother and his grandmother who had helped raise him. I felt like the stress was building up inside me and all I could do was tamp it down—which didn’t get rid of it but allowed me to function and take care of our wonderful daughters. And I’m sure my husband was also “stressed to the max,” not to mention the rest of the family. When I wound up at the chiropractor’s with a back tied up in a million knots, he asked if I was dealing with any stress. I may have laughed in his face. But “I’m handling it pretty well,” I said, and I really believed I was. “That’s because your body has taken it all,” he said. Hmmmm…
The blessing of our two daughters—one a newborn—helped the whole family get through that year. It’s a good thing newborns and toddlers don’t come with any stress, right? Most of it is good, but stress nonetheless. I was never so glad to flip the calendar to the next year as I was that year, even though I did enjoy every minute with my precious daughters.
Who Feels Stressed Today?
I kind of feel like 2020 was one of those years—but turning the calendar page to 2021 hasn’t brought much relief. The stress we are all under with COVID puts many people near the breaking point, and any additional stress added to our lives can be more than we can easily cope with. It’s like a seething volcano ready to erupt. There have been quite a few additional stressors for everyone in the last year, wouldn’t you agree?
But there is always hope! There is always God! And while we can’t always control what happens to us, we can control the way we react. And we can learn and grow from our experiences, good and bad. Easy to say, but harder to do when we are so stressed. There are, however, quite a few actual physical and mental actions we can take to manage it, and through the years I have learned many techniques to deal with stress.
Dealing with stress in an inspirational way
Because of my experiences and working on and researching stress relief, I’ve been thinking about developing an online course about managing the underlying (chronic) stress in our lives so that we are better able to handle stress in crisis and not reach the breaking point. Turning it around. Trading in stress for inspiration. This is a topic I’ve taught in person, but I’m working on putting it online. I’d love to get your feedback on this idea. What would you like to see in an online course on dealing with chronic stress?
Blue Skies
One of the ways I deal with stress is “blue sky thinking.” The way I see it, when the day is full of storm clouds, there is always blue sky above those clouds. If you were in an airplane you could fly through the clouds into that brightness and find the sun is still shining with no clouds to obscure it.
With God we can rise above any storm into eternal blue. There is always hope in Christ. Blue sky thinking inspires me as I deal with stress, and as I live each day, even through the extreme challenges of 2020 and 2021. But beyond that knowledge and faith, there are practical steps you can take if you want to trade in the overwhelm and stress for inspiration and peace.
If you’d be interested in an online course to help manage stress from the inside out, please let me know in the comments below. And I’d love for you to share this post in your social media so I can get input from as many people as possible.
Staying Positive
I want to encourage you to do what you can to stay positive during this time. You might like to read this post offering 21 tips for inspiration and stress relief for 2021, and I also have 14 FREE journal prompts to inspire thoughts and activities which can help you maintain control over your stress. I’d love to send them to you. Just click here to enter your email address, and they’ll come right to your inbox.
I pray you are staying safe and weathering the storms that are still raging. Hang in there with hope and faith. And remember, the sky is still blue above the clouds.
