When you set yourself to do something, do you wait until the circumstances are right? One day, long ago, a friend of mine who wanted to get started on exercising with weights told me, and it was winter, that he was waiting for summer in order to feel more motivated.
This surprised me a lot because I always do, whatever I do, when it is right in my inner self only, and with disregard to circumstances. Sometimes I look around and if I find something that appeals to me, I idealize it, I fall in love with it, and then I just set myself to do it. And I do not think about the circumstances, except to find a way to go around them, just like the Mongolians went around the Great Wall of China, if necessary.
There is a concept in the discipline of Organizational Behavior that makes sense to me here and that is the concept of locus of control. Some people have an external locus of control: they say that things "happen" to them; they say they cannot do something due to some external circumstance or power; they see themselves as victims of other peoples' doings or of fate. In a few words, they are controlled by their circumstances.
The opposite of this attitude is the internal locus of control one. People who have an internal locus of control think they are in charge of their lives and circumstances, they believe they can transform themselves and their conditions and make a difference in the world and are proactive with regards to realizing their dreams.
The question I sometimes ask myself is whether people are born into one of this two categories or whether they make themselves into one. In my experience, the people that belong into one of them seem to have always belonged into them, so I tend to believe that locus of control is innate.
So, like my friend above, do you wait for summer to feel more encouraged or do you just pave your own way?
