In Carol Dweck’s book, Mindset, there are two types of mindsets that have control over what you are going to do. There is the Fixed Mindset and the growth mindset. The Fixed is thought to be people who believe that their success is based on their Talent and skill. Then with the growth mindset, these people believe they are able to accomplish what they can thanks to hard work.
Now our video this week adds to that study and helps break the why down a little bit more and adds the possibility as to why people who have a growth mindset tend to have more motivation than those with a fixed mindset. It centers around a concept called Locus of control.
Now as me I was seeing Locus as a new word so had to look up the term and see what locus actually means. Because my mind wanted to run to a Grasshopper like bug, yet knew that was a locust.
Locus
a
: the place where something is situated or occurs : SITE, LOCATION
was the culture of medicine in the beginning dispersed from a single focus or did it arise in several loci?—S. C. Harvey
b
: a center of activity, attention, or concentration
in democracy the locus of power is in the people—H. G. Rickover
Mirriam and Webster
So you put that all together you get Locus of Control being
the degree to which you believe you have control over your life
Now our narrator also talks about the two important locus’ of control, being the Internal Locus of Control and the External Locus of Control.
The Fixed Mindset is the External Locus of control, or all the power is outside of them and they have no ability to control it. This is also can be related to Emotional Adulthood and Emotional Childhood. The latter is an External locus of Control while Growth mindset people also have a tendency to lean towards Emotional Adulthood and an Internal Locus of Control.
You can also see how leaders and their external locus of control are always owning their own dirt when they mess up. They don’t blame other people or things when they fail. They blame themselves for whatever failure they have encountered. While those men who blame others also tend to be lower motivated.