A 4X Agent is in control
Hey all you future 4X’ers out there, thank you tuning in once again to 4X Formula Radio. This is out last episode in a series of 9 Episodes focusing on what a 4X Agent is. Period. This is what you become in your journey. What is the goal? These 9 facets. If you are listening for the first time, it will make a lot more sense if you listen to the prior 8 episodes in sequence so that you have a clear understanding of the 4X Agent Identity.
Ok…we made it…#9 a 4X Agent is in Control. I don’t mean controlling or a controller…I mean In Control. I mean the one steering the ship.
Intro
I did an episode a few months ago and I was talking about the Internal Locus of Control. I had never heard of this concept before. I had never heard of that term “Internal Locus of Control” until I read about it in a book by Charles Duhigg, called Smarter, Faster, Better.
The opposite of that is an “External Locus of Control”….these are people that have a weak Internal Locus of Control…they blame the surroundings around them, they blame the things that they have no control over. They give credit to the things that “happen” to them to everything and everyone else, around them. The label, that I have for these people is that, they have a “victim mentality”. This was before I learned that this has actually been studied. These people are always victims and they always seem to have things “happening to them”. The people in their lives are responsible for their failures, problems, misgivings, and challenges or when a challenge or problem arises they focus on getting the people in their lives around them to solve these problems for them and if they don’t, then this person will actually put those people into the category as a contributor to their problem. It is a “no-win” situation being a friend or family member in the lives of these people. It is tough. You all know someone like this. We all do. Do you know a person like this? Now to be fair, I will admit that this is the extreme example. This is more obvious. I would contest that there are alot more subtle examples too.
Let’s talk about our programming once again. I have been doing this the whole time in all 8 of the other episodes. The reason I do this is so that you recognize what is happening in our society and in our social influences today…it is so powerful but also very subtle. It is because it is so subtle that it is so powerful…I think. Consider this. If we fail or falter, we have so many excuses don’t we. It is so easy to find a reason that is external that contributed to our failure. You can post it on social media and you will get lots of “likes” supporting that thought. This will, in turn, actually help validate your failure for you. This is what we are always looking for “validation”. Because then, we are released from personal responsibility and the failure becomes attached to, some other external reason, or excuse, or person, or event, or ….something that is completely out of our control.
“Oh…Its because of that…that’s the reason….its not me, if it weren’t for that circumstance beyond my control, then everything would have been different….not my fault….”
We do this all the time. We are all guilty of it.
DO any of you golf? I golf once in a while. Not very consistently or as much as I would like, because I am so busy all the time, but I when I do book a golf time, I think of it as a little 4 or 5 hour vacation. I really enjoy it. It is one of my goals to be able to golf more and take time to do that. Last Father’s Day, I actually went to a store called “GolfTown” and I chose a new set of irons and new set of Drivers and actually for the first time spent some money on golf clubs. This was a kind of a big deal to me. I had a hard time making the decision to invest in a good set of clubs because I didn’t think that I was good enough to warrant spending the money. I figured, that for the clubs to make a difference, I had to
