Is Your Life Controlled By What’s Happening Inside You Or Outside You?

By Oleksii

What do you do when everything around you is shifting, and not in your favor? Do you let external events dictate your peace, or do you lean into what’s happening inside of you to chart your course forward?

This question has been on my heart and mind. You may see it differently, and that’s okay. In fact, I’d love to hear your perspective in the comments.

Let’s talk about something real: DEI. I’ll be honest, recent political shifts and organizational pullbacks have financially impacted my work. If you’re in L&D and have delivered DEI training for government agencies, you may have heard the same words I did: “The contract has been canceled.”

When I first heard it, I felt unsettled. Who wouldn’t? It’s not just a contract, it’s your livelihood. But instead of staying in that space, I stepped back to reflect. For me, faith is what grounds me. My relationship with God (Jesus) gives me the strength to stay steady. Even when I don’t know how things will turn out, I know they will turn out for my good and I will learn something on the journey. I recognize that not everyone shares the same religious foundation, but for me, faith allows me to reframe external chaos so it doesn’t corrupt my internal peace.

This process of noticing what’s happening inside so you can better respond to what’s happening outside is a foundational skill I teach in my Emotional Intelligence course. It’s a critical competency for leaders and teams navigating uncertainty. The stronger our internal compass, the better equipped we are to lead with clarity, compassion, and control.

This also ties into a psychological concept called Locus of Control (LOC), which is the extent to which we believe we control our lives versus being controlled by external forces.

• Internal LOC: You believe your actions shape your outcomes.

• External LOC: You believe your life is shaped by outside forces like fate, luck, other people or institutions

I’ve lived both. I’ve experienced setbacks mentally and financially that felt like someone else’s doing, and in some instances they were. But over time, I’ve learned to shift inward. I stopped focusing on them and started evaluating me. That shift is what moved me from powerlessness to progress.

Let me share a personal example. Years ago, a meaningful, long-term friendship ended abruptly over a disagreement. I tried to mend it for almost a year, but there was no effort on the other side for reconciliation. At first, I blamed them for how things turned out, replaying in my head what they did and how it hurt me. My pain was their fault, not mine, because they caused the problem that destroyed our friendship. That opened the door for anger and prolonged pain for me as the “victim” of our relationship. Eventually, I was able to recognize that I played a significant role in the conflict we faced and was able to take ownership of it. Accepting that helped me shift from blame to gratitude for what the friendship gave me and for the lessons and wonderful experiences it left behind. Let’s consider a professional example.

You work with a person that you’ve struggled communicating with for some time. It seems you always clash with this individual, no matter the topic. During a meeting, you shared your ideas for ways to improve customer engagement and the way your peer responded was two words shy of calling your recommendations “stupid”.

A couple of weeks later a project team was put together to work on improving the customer experience index and you weren’t selected. As fate would have it, your peer was selected to work on the project team. You felt that you weren’t selected because what they said in the meeting has tarnished your reputation. They are the reason why you missed this opportunity. You resent them for what they did to you and how they have impacted your chances of getting greater senior leadership exposure in your organization, which will impact your future at the company.

Now, some people get stuck here, carrying resentment, replaying betrayal, holding on to hurt. I get it. But that’s where Emotional Intelligence and an internal LOC matter most. Even when you’ve been wronged (or believe you’ve been wronged), healing and forgiveness give you back your power and that comes through self-reflection and self-accountability. You’re not responsible for what someone did to you, but you are responsible for how you choose to move forward, which gives you the power to control your destiny. Let's look at that meeting again and the belief that someone else is the reason you were not selected for the project team and now your future is dismal at the company (external LOC). 

Taking some time to self-reflect and self-evaluate, you realize that although you did not like how your peer responded, you realize that your insights were surface level in comparison to your peers and you hadn’t done any real research to understand the contributing factors impacting low customer engagement scores. Owning that helps you self-regulate and recognize that perhaps you weren’t chosen for the project team because they are seeking people who demonstrate concrete knowledge of issues impacting the customer experience and not just topical asssessments. That’s what having an internal LOC is really about. For me, cultivating an internal LOC has become essential to helping me move forward. Otherwise, my life is constantly at the mercy of people, politics, or unpredictable events.

Now, back to DEI.

As a leadership trainer and facilitator, I still believe in the power of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Diverse workforces deserve equal opportunities for advancement, influence, and growth. That shouldn't change. But, and here’s me being transparent, I also believe DEI sometimes drifted into creating exclusion in the name of inclusion. In my opinion, this drift is forcing us to reassess our true north for DEI. That’s a bigger conversation for another day. (Yes, I brought it up and yes feel free to comment. I may quietly read and reflect, but I will be tuned in.)

What I’ll say in closing is this, we are all being impacted by change. Life is complex and messy right now. But, the more we invest in strengthening our inner world through building emotional intelligence and increasing our internal locus of control, the better we can lead, live, and love with resilience and clarity (a bit of faith won’t hurt either).

So I ask you, what’s guiding your life right now? Is it what’s inside you, or what’s happening around you?

The floor is open.