Locus Of Control & Excelling In Life/Business - FDDTC #4

Hey there. Welcome to another episode of the From Delivery Driver to CEO podcast. This is your host, Devin Zander. And these are tales, methods and strategies that took me from a high school dropout in Jimmy John's Delivery Driver to being the CEO of an eight figure software company with over 50,000 customers around the world. So if you're ready to improve your marketing and skyrocket your business, you've come to the right place. Now let's hop in to today's episode. We came a long way. That's what the song said. And I could do all things. What's up, everybody? Welcome to episode number four of the Delivery Driver to CEO podcast. Today we will be discussing your locus of control and how it affects your life. Now, a lot of people haven't really heard of locus of control. They have no idea what it is. But this is something that every single person on the planet deals with. And I will get into it in just a second. But it has a huge impact on not just your business, but how you approach things in life in general. And essentially whether or not you think that you can get things done or whether you think that the outside world controls your life. So let's go over the two types of people. Number one, there are people who have an internal of locus of control. So these people can make things happen. Their mindset, their belief is, I make things happen. And then there's the second type of person who has an external locus of control. Now, instead of them making things happen, for the external locus of control, things happen to them. So their quote is kind of, there is nothing I can do about my future. They think they're not in control. So if you have an internal locus of control, there are a few beliefs. You believe that you can determine your own future. You're like, hey, look what I can do, I can do this, I can do this, I can do this. And the idea is that anything is possible. You're in control of your life and you choose what to do. You just make it happen, right? And you know, like I said, internal looks of control, you make things happen. Now there's also the external looks of control and what they or how they look at life is, why bother, you know, I can't do anything. Why does everything happen to me? So they blame things happening to them, okay, Instead of, you know, they're making a mistake, instead of realizing like, hey, you know, I made a mistake, I can fix it. They just go, ugh, why do things happen to me? Why do all the bad things happen to me? And they think that they aren't in control of their future. They think there's nothing they can do. No matter what they do, they're destined to be on the same path forever, and nothing will ever get better. Now, obviously, we want to have an internal locus of control, because that is reality. Okay? The reality is, is you're in complete control of your life. If you want to do something, you do it. Right? If you want to learn something, you get out there and you learn it. We'll get more into that. So there was a scientific experiment that was done with some dogs, and I know it sounds random. There was a science experiment. I don't have sources or anything like that, okay? So, you know, I'm still new to podcasting. I don't have my sources written down, but this is real. You can Google it. Please go do it. Have fun. But there's a science experiment with two dogs. Now, they were both put in cages with a little partition in the middle, middle that blocked the, you know, separate part of the cage. Dog number one. Okay, sorry, I guess I should preface this. At the bottom of their cage, at least on their side, the side that they were sitting on, that side had a shocked floor or whatever. So the scientist could press a button, and the floor would turn into, like, a shock pad, and it would shock the dogs. So dog number one, he could press a button, and the partition in the middle would go down and he could jump to the other side where there was no shock. Dog number two had absolutely no control. Okay? So what happened was they actually took that dog who had no control, and later on, they put him in the other dog's kennel, or whatever it is. So the dog could now press the button and escape. And he had even seen that other dog do this. He'd seen the dog press the button and escape. So they put the dog, who was getting shocked, who couldn't escape into the other dog's cage, and now he had the ability to escape. However, when the scientists turn on the shock pad, the dog, even though he was in a cage that he could escape from, and even though he had seen the other dog do it, he just sat there helpless and didn't try. Now, it's worth noting that in his original cage, he did try to escape like the other dog was doing, found out he couldn't, and then was like, all right, I'm screwed. I'm shocked, so I'm just gonna live with it, right? And they put him in the new cage, and, you know, he just sat there, endured the shocks. And whined. And eventually they removed the partition in the middle altogether. So all the dog had to do is walk to the other side. But still most of the dogs just sat there. They thought they couldn't do anything about it and they just endured the pain. And that's called learned helplessness. And that is a feature that kind of goes with that external locus of control. If you feel like you're helpless and you can't do anything about it, then you kind of stop excelling in life. And in this example, this was a dog learning he was helpless, even though he wasn't. He could have escaped, but he had been so conditioned to think he couldn't that he just sat back and dealt with his life. And there's a really good image that I feel like everybody has seen. And it's the elephant. He's all sad and all that's holding him down is one really small stake in a rope. In reality, this gigantic beast he could rip free at any given time. But he didn't because he has that external locus of control where he feels like he has no control of his life. So he's just sitting there tied with a five pound stake, holding down this multiple thousand pound animal. Obviously he could get out if he wants. And there's an image that I like, which is people are walking down a road and there's a wall in the middle of the road and the wall is only about 15ft wide, right? And right on the other side of the wall there's a pot of gold. But the wall is a learned helplessness barrier. So all these people are stopping at the wall and they're saying, let's wait till someone tells us what to do, otherwise we might get in trouble. And in the image it's people like, oh, they have these thoughts, you know, like, I'm useless or there's nothing I can do, I'm tied down by. No, no, no. But realistically, all they had to do was get up, walk around and get to the goal. But when people think that things happen to them and think they have no control over their life, they don't do this when they hit a roadblock or anything. They just turn around or they wait for someone to tell them what to do. And I see this all the time with our customers in our app business too, is it's the silliest, easiest little questions, right? Like, oh, how do I do this with my theme? Or hey, how do I remove this from my website? Something like that. And it's like, well, did you Google it? Because, you know, you can wait for our support to answer you. And a lot of the times what our support is going to do is Google it, because, you know, you're asking questions unrelated to our apps, and then we have the answer. So all you had to do is Google it. But so many people are tying themselves down because they think they aren't capable of figuring it out on their own. And you need to start getting that internal locus of control. Realize that you do determine your future, and you can take steps. You can change, right? Look what you can do. You can make things happen. And I know people are like, well, how am I supposed to compete? Because some people are just naturally talented, right? And that's not true. So if you read the book Grit by Angela Duckworth, I think this is a very, very, very important read for every entrepreneur out there. Because, yes, talent is a good thing to have, okay? And talent will help people get far. So even if you're not that talented and you think like, oh, I can't improve. I'm not. I'm just naturally not talented. The way that Grit works or the way that you get results is talent times effort, which equals skill, right? But then to get results or to get achievements, you need to multiply skill times effort. So what you'll notice is effort is in there twice. So even if you have like 4 times talent and 10 times effort, but someone else has 5 times talent or 6 times talent, but they only have 1 times effort, they're not putting as much effort in as you are, all right? Obviously, they're not going to be as successful. So when it really comes down to it, the most important thing you can have is effort. So if you want to grow, if you want to get that internal locus of control, if you want to make things happen, realistically, all you need to do is put more effort in, and I see this all the time as well, is people think they're putting in effort when they're working one or two hours a day on their business and it's busy work. It's not work that actually gets things done. And they're getting distracted. This, this, and that. And realistically, you're only getting 15 good minutes of work done. So onto my next point is you can determine your future, okay? And whether or not you think that you're capable of making things happen or learning or all that, the reality is, is you're in complete control. There's this little thing, it's called neuroplasticity. And that basically is when your brain is making new Connections, and it gets smarter. So if you think like, hey, you know, I'm just not smart enough to get this done, it's total bullshit. It's lies you're feeding yourself to hold you back from success. Because the truth is, is that IQ that you have right now, or however smart you are right now, that is not static, okay? Your IQ levels are dynamic. It can go up. Or if you do a lot of things like drinking alcohol and stuff like that can actually go down. But the point here is you can get smarter. You can increase your iq. And there are steps that you take to increase your iq, get smarter, and become better at whatever it is you want to do. So here are the steps you need to take. You need to have strong, infrequent activation. So you need to constantly be reading or thinking or working on something, right? Constantly. And I'm not just saying like once a week, you need to do it constantly, you need to do it daily. That will cause changes in your brain's synaptic structure. And then your little connections in your brain, they'll start to strengthen. Now, there are some issues, okay? Because a seminar style training is not enough. And what seminar style training means is when you go into and you attend a seminar or something like that, and then you're done, you spent a day there or two days there, then you're done. That's nowhere near enough, okay? That's not going to improve your iq. It's just gonna give you some knowledge. But knowledge without implementation is useless, right? And when you're learning, you need to constantly reinforce it, okay? You need to be using what you're learning. Cause if you're not using it, you'll lose it. That's a real thing, okay? And that's essentially it. You need to make sure you stay away from seminar style training. And then whenever you do learn something, you need to make sure you're implementing it in your daily life or whatever it is that you know. If it's a hobby or something like golf, and you're learning a new type of swing or something, you need to make sure you're actually implementing that when you're out on the course or out on the range and not just thinking about it. And then of course, seminar style training is not enough. So learning is experience. Everything else is just information. And that's a quote by Albert Einstein, which kind of goes back to what I just said. Learning is actually experiencing and doing something. And if you're not doing something with it or you're not experiencing the things you learned it's just information and you'll never use it in your daily life. So it's really important to realize the differences there because having information is totally, you know, wow, you might be good at trivia, but it's not anything good for your life. It's not gonna actually bring value to your life. Now learning is when you're actually implementing and experiencing these items, okay? So I want you to take what you learned today and actually start to live it out. When it comes time for you to try something new or work on your business, or if you have setbacks or really just every single time that you're thinking about doing something, make sure you're exercising that internal locus of control or, or being aware of what's going on, being aware of your thoughts and realizing these thoughts. So when you have that internal locus of control, just remember, you determine your future. Okay, look what you can do, you can make things happen. You do make things happen. Because the sky's the limit. Anything you want to do is possible. You just need to sit down, put your mind to it, put the work in and do it. And if you ever have those external locus of control thoughts where you're blaming the outside world and things happen to you, just remember you're bullshitting yourself and you're not doing yourself any favors because all that's going to do is hold you in life. If you can't be accountable, if you can't realize that you're in control, you make everything happen. I'm sorry to say I do not think you will get very far. So whenever you have those thoughts, why bother? Why is everything bad happen to me? Oh my God, why is this happening to me? Or there's nothing I can do about my future, I'll never be smarter. Just remember, neuroplasticity is real. All you have to do is practice it. You will get smarter. And everything you do, you can get better at, as long as you put your mind to it. You. And there's a really, really good quote by Henry Ford. I'll leave us with that and I'll end it there. The quote is, whether you think you can or think you cannot, you're right. So I think that's perfect. You're in total control. If you think you can't do it, you sure as hell aren't going to do it. And if you think you can and you exercise that internal locus of control where you make things happen, then I believe that you have what it takes and you will take the steps to make it happen so that's it for today's episode, guys. Make sure you give us that five star rating. Make sure you subscribe. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and take it easy.