The Locus of Control Exercise: Building Resilience By “Letting Go”

By Joe Schroeder, Ph.D., Associate Executive Director, AWSA

While serving others can be incredibly rewarding, it also can take its toll, especially this past year with COVID.  So AWSA has been offering monthly self-care sessions since August to help.  Many of the sessions highlight the wonderful resources available through the Compassion Resilience Toolkit for Schools (compassionresliencetoolkit.org), a toolkit that has been developed by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI) in partnership with the WISE (Wisconsin Initiative for Stigma Elimination) Network and Rogers InHealth.  One of the more impactful activities we have incorporated into our webinar series this past year is the Locus of Control Exercise, which helps people manage overwhelm and build resilience.  This article will walk you through how to incorporate this into your own self-care.

You can use the graphic organizer and steps listed below to work through this exercise independently:

1. First, identify a driver of either fatigue or fear for you, right now, in your life or leadership.  For example, a driver of fear for me is concern about my family’s well being through a pandemic.  Whatever this driver of fear or fatigue might be for you, write it down at the top of the graphic below.

2. Then, in the two column table that follows, list (on the left) those things that drive your fear.  For example, one of the left side bullet points for me regarding the fear for my family’s well being would be “ongoing spikes in public health data.” 

3. Then, in the two-column table, list (on the right) those things that fuel your resilience.  For example, “daily exercise and/or mediation” work for me.  Another bullet point would be “playing board games with family.”

4. Once your bullets on both sides of the table are completed, cross out the ideas on either list that are outside of your control.  Then circle ideas on either list that are within your control.

5. Finally and importantly, leverage the results of this activity by taking informed choices from this point forward.  This means “letting go” of (or at least reducing the attention you give to) the things you crossed out so that you can focus on those items that you circled, which are within your locus of control.

In tumultuous times like these, mindfulness can be so important for each of us, both as leaders and human beings, where mindfulness is defined as “my ability to be present and to use the present moment to serve me and my fellow humanity.”  And to be sure, focusing on what we can control -- the purpose of this exercise - is a mindfulness activity!  Therefore, I hope exercises like these help you become more mindful and resilient so that you can replenish the reservoir of wellbeing in you that can serve both you and your fellow humanity well, regardless of the storms and tides that may rise.  Thanks for who you are and what you do, everyone -- and be well!