The Power of an Internal Locus of Control and How to Develop It

Kathy Morelli
1 day ago
6 min read

Updated: 7 hours ago

"Everything happens for a reason" is one of the most common things people say — to themselves and to each other — when life feels overwhelming or out of control. As a source of comfort in hard moments, it can help. But as a sustained worldview, it carries a hidden cost.

While this belief can provide comfort during overwhelming or traumatic moments, it can also quietly shift your sense of control outward—leaving you feeling powerless in your own life.

Many things that happen to us are not purposeful. They are random, unfair, and without meaning — particularly when we are talking about trauma, loss, or harm caused by others.

When we insist on finding a reason, we can end up directing energy toward explanation rather than toward healing. And quietly, without realizing it, we can begin to feel that we have no real agency in our own lives.

That shift — from agency to passivity — is what this article is about.

Psychologist Julian Rotter first described the concept of locus of control in 1954 — the degree to which people believe they have influence over the events in their lives. People with an external locus of control tend to experience life as something that happens to them. People with an internal locus of control believe their choices and actions genuinely matter.

That difference in belief turns out to have profound consequences for mental health.

To protect your mental health and emotional well-being, it’s important to develop an internal locus of control: a mindset that emphasizes agency, responsibility, and self-efficacy.

What is an Internal Locus of Control?

People with an internal locus of control focus on what they can influence rather than feeling at the mercy of circumstances. They believe their choices and efforts matter—and that belief itself becomes a source of resilience.

In contrast, individuals with an external locus of control tend to view outcomes as driven by luck, fate, or other people's actions. Research consistently links an external locus of control with higher rates of anxiety, depression, learned helplessness, and chronic stress. A large meta-analysis by Roddenberry and Renk found that external locus of control was a significant predictor of both anxiety and depression across populations.

An internal locus of control does not mean believing you can control everything. That would be its own form of distortion. It means directing your energy toward what is genuinely within your influence — and releasing, without despair, what is not.

This is Not a Fixed Trait

One of the most important things research tells us: locus of control is not a personality type you are born with. It is a learned thinking pattern — which means it can be unlearned, and replaced.

Albert Bandura's work on self-efficacy — the belief in one's capacity to act effectively — showed that small, repeated experiences of competence gradually shift how people see themselves in relation to their lives. You don't change your locus of control through insight alone. You change it through action, over time, in small doses.

This is good news. It means wherever you are starting from, movement is possible.

How to Develop an Internal Locus of Control

Take Responsibility For Your Actions

Growth begins with ownership. When mistakes happen, acknowledge them honestly and focus on what you can learn. Blaming circumstances, luck, or other people may feel protective in the short term, but it ultimately reinforces powerlessness.

This also means noticing victim-based thinking patterns when they arise. Not with judgment, but with curiosity. Thoughts like this always happens to me or nothing I do makes a difference are worth examining. They often feel like observations, but they function as instructions — telling your nervous system to stop trying.

Distinguish What You Can and Cannot Control

An internal locus of control is not about pretending you have power you don't have. It is about discernment — making a clear, honest distinction between what is outside your control and what is not.

You cannot control how others behave. You cannot control the past. You often cannot control outcomes. But you do control:

You may not control how others behave, but you do control:

How you respond
The boundaries you set
Where you direct your attention and energy
Who you allow into your inner circle
Whether you ask for help

Clarity about this distinction is itself empowering. Much of the anxiety that accompanies an external locus of control comes from conflating the two — either trying to control what cannot be controlled, or surrendering agency over what can.

Build New Skills

When life feels stuck, skill-building often matters more than insight alone. Bandura's research showed that mastery experiences — actually doing something difficult and succeeding — are the most powerful way to build self-efficacy and shift locus of control.

When life feels stuck, skill-building often matters more than insight alone.

Struggling with emotional overwhelm? Learning nervous-system regulation skills like those in DBT gives you concrete tools that work.
Repeating relationship patterns? Identifying the emotional roadblocks underneath those patterns — and learning to work with them — changes the equation.

Once you recognize that many challenges are workable, obstacles begin to look less like fate and more like problems with solutions and invitations to grow.

Act, Even Imperfectly

An external locus of control often shows up as passivity — waiting for life to change on its own, for circumstances to improve, for other people to act first.

An internal locus of control asks for something different: the willingness to participate in your own life. To make a decision, even without certainty. To take a small step, even without a clear outcome.

An external locus of control often shows up as passivity: waiting for life to change on its own.

Research by Ellen Langer on the psychology of control found that even small, symbolic acts of agency — making a choice, taking responsibility for a minor outcome — can begin to shift a person's sense of personal power. The action does not have to be large. It has to be yours.

An internal locus of control asks for courage—the courage to act, decide, and participate fully in your own life.

You already have more influence than you think.

The Deeper Shift

Developing an internal locus of control is less about becoming someone who has it all together, and more about becoming someone who keeps showing up — for their own life, on their own behalf.

That shift doesn't happen overnight. But it compounds. Each time you respond rather than react, set a boundary rather than withdraw, try something new rather than wait — you are building evidence that your actions matter.

Over time, that evidence becomes a new belief.

Try This: Building Your Internal Locus of Control

The following exercises are short, practical, and drawn directly from the research above. As with any skill, the goal is not to do them perfectly — it's to do them.

Exercise 1: The Control Audit Take a situation that's currently causing you stress. Draw two columns: Within My Control and Outside My Control. Fill both honestly. Then ask: where am I spending most of my energy? The goal is not to abandon what you can't control — it's to redirect your effort toward what you can.

Exercise 2: The Agency Sentence When you notice a thought like nothing I do matters or this always happens to me — pause and rewrite it as an agency sentence. Not toxic positivity, but honest reframing. I can't control what happened, but I can decide how I respond. Do this in writing. Externalizing the thought makes it easier to examine.

Exercise 3: One Small Act Identify one area of your life where you have been waiting — for permission, for circumstances to change, for someone else to go first. Choose one small action you could take this week that is entirely your own. Take it. Notice what happens in your body when you do.

Exercise 4: The Skill Inventory Make a list of three challenges you're currently facing. For each one, ask: is there a skill that would help me here? Often what feels like fate is actually a skills gap — and skills can be learned. This reframe alone can begin to shift the needle.

Moving Forward

Developing an internal locus of control is one of many interconnected skills that support emotional resilience and long-term wellbeing. It connects directly to the work explored throughout this site can can in the Integrated Mental Health (IMH) approach, using DBT skills, emotional regulation, healthy relationships, and trauma recovery.

If you find yourself wanting support in this work, reaching out to a therapist who understands the relationship between thinking patterns and emotional health can be a meaningful next step.

Please contact Kathy via her Psychology Today profile.

Sources

Rotter, J. B. (1966). Generalized expectancies for internal versus external control of reinforcement. Psychological Monographs: General and Applied, 80(1), 1–28.

Bandura, A. (1977). Self-efficacy: Toward a unifying theory of behavioral change. Psychological Review, 84(2), 191–215.

Roddenberry, A., & Renk, K. (2010). Locus of control and self-efficacy: Potential mediators of stress, illness, and utilization of health services in college students. Child Psychiatry and Human Development, 41(4), 353–370.

Langer, E. J. (1975). The illusion of control. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 32(2), 311–328.

Seligman, M. E. P. (1975). Helplessness: On Depression, Development, and Death. W. H. Freeman.

Twenge, J. M., Zhang, L., & Im, C. (2004). It's beyond my control: A cross-temporal meta-analysis of increasing externality in locus of control. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 8(3), 308–319.