How many times in an average week will you hear someone utter these sentiments: It’s not my job! It was not my fault. What can I do about it? It is bigger than me. I wish someone would do something about that. My belief is that the more a person or organization focuses on the external environment rather than how they respond to it-the less happy and successful they will be.

Locus of control is a concept in social psychology that refers to the extent to which an individual believes they can control events that affect them. Individuals with a high internal locus of control believe that events result primarily from their own behavior and actions. Those with an external locus of control believe that powerful others, fate, or chance primarily determine events.

Given this belief system, those with external locus of control tend to feel they have less control over their fate. Research suggests that external locus of control is linked to greater stress and a greater tendency towards clinical depression. We might even think of people with an external locus of control as “victims.” That is, in their own minds at least, they are the victim of external forces, good and bad, that influence the course of their lives.

Those with a high internal locus of control tend to be the opposite. Since they feel “in charge” of their own destiny, they tend to take more initiative and research suggests a strong relationship between internal locus of control with success and happiness. That is, the more one feels powerful to change reality vs. being a victim of reality, the happier and more successful you will be.

Now imagine for a moment an organization or society with an external vs. and internal locus of control. An organization with an external locus will be filled with people acting and feeling like victims waiting for someone else to determine their destiny. The words “they” and “you” will be the most common start of every sentence. The focus of the “they” could be the marketplace, the CEO, the managers, the competitors, or the economy. Things would be better around here if the CEO would do this, if the market would just pick up, if the other department would only cooperate. A society with an external locus of control will exhibit similar behavior. People will say the “government” should do something about poverty, crime and the environment. People will throw up their hands at the largest problems we face saying “what can I do about those things.”

Now imagine how an organization or society would be different filled with people with an internal locus of control. When unhappy on their jobs, people would not blame others but instead look inside themselves for the answer. Rather than acting like victims they will take initiative to solve problems, stepping up and taking the “bull” by the horns even the outer environment is not perfect. They will not point to the other department or the marketplace when things go poorly, but instead look inside to see how they can change things.

Here is a great example that will be featured in my new book-Stepping Up: How Responsibility Changes Everything. Joanne was assigned a dying business at a large Telco. Operator services-basically information and operator assist-was a business on the decline losing money in a world where the internet would replace many of these functions. She was told to reduce the headcount and cost. Her new job was fertile ground for blaming the market, telling her people the company is making me downsize you, and to let her people stay in that same victim mode. Instead, Joanne believed that we make our own destiny-no excuses. So she engaged her people-told them we can either act like victims or fight to save this business. Together they decided that if everyone else was trying to get out of this business, maybe instead of outsourcing the business they could become the best operator services in the world-the low cost, high service alternative for other Telcos. They fashioned a simple mantra-My Business, My Responsibility so every employee saw it as their job to make this happen. No one else would save them.

Never once acting like a victim or blaming the external environment, she led her team to create a profit center and double the number of employees. But the key shift was internal-believing they could create their own destiny. She told me: “There are always constraints, always a good excuse, but the question is: What will you do with those constraints?”

If we are going to step up, we first have to have an internal mind shift. The mind shift is from one in which we believe that things are controlled out there to the idea that things are in our control. Making that shift means when we are unhappy we will look to ourselves first before looking outside. We will stop blaming our boss, our company or our spouse for our unhappiness and instead start by asking what WE can do to “step up” and make things different. When we see a problem that bothers us, whether poor service or bad attitudes in our company or garbage in our neighborhood, we won’t first ask what others can do to solve the problem but will begin by asking what we can do.

Be well, do good work. John