Winners and Losers. Responsibility and Locus of Control.

Sure, I'll talk about the election - kinda.

Note: I will begin this entry with a paragraph briefly introducing a psychological phenomenon called transactional analysis. First, I am not an expert, but rather over-simplifying the concepts for ease of reference. Second, it’s only one paragraph, so bear with me.

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Script analysis is a cluster within this concept called transactional analysis, as created by Eric Berne. Script analysis says that everyone is born and raised to develop a script by which they will live their life, based on how they handle each individual situation. It could be said that your script is your habits and the longer you’ve had your habits, the more they are a part of you and ingrained into who you are as a person. But it’s much more than habits.

Boiled down to what I can remember from my history class in high school, there are 4 basic types of scripts: winner, loser, anti-script, and script-breaker.

Winners are people who take responsibility for everything that happens to them, but has nothing to do with their level of success.

Losers are people who constantly blame everything that happens to them on outside forces. Amazingly, these people could have money and fame, but still be complete losers because they can’t handle a basic confrontation without dragging it out and being dramatic.

Anti-script are the people who live the script opposite of the one they were given by their upbringing. AKA, if your parents were losers, but you aren’t, then you’re living an anti-script.

Last is the script-breaker. These people are low-key incredible. A script breaker is similar to an anti-script, except that they only exist as a person who was given a loser-script, lived it for awhile, and then broke free from it later in life, maybe late twenties and beyond.¹

And these scripts are tied to an individual’s sense of their “locus of control”. A locus of control can be internal or external, and it’s basically this: external = fate has decided I am like this and I can’t do anything about it and internal = everything in my life is my fault and I need to take charge.

And what does this have to do with the election?

Well, frankly I think it’s obvious: all politicians have a loser script. No matter what they manage to blame their circumstances on other people.

But more importantly: Life moves on. Things happen in our life that are out of our control constantly. And as Dave Ramsey tells his listeners constantly: “What you do in with your house is much more important for your life than anything that happens in the White House.”

And it’s true. I have seen quite a few videos of people freaking out over the results of the election because they are sure Trump is the antichrist. But I’d like to tell them one thing: their life would not change all that much if Harris had won instead. And even if it did, so what? You can’t control it. Sure, it’s worrisome. But you have to focus on the controllables in your own life.

And what are those?

1. Taking responsibility for your decisions.

2. Treating others with kindness.

3. Choosing bravery over cowardice.

4. Studying hard and working even harder.

Become a script breaker. Take responsibility for your actions, both past and future - yes, your past is part of this. You got this. Be honest with yourself and others.

Don’t be a loser. Choose to be a winner in life. Answer the call of your adventure.

1. It isn’t an exact science - what I am explaining, that is. Check out the book, Scripts People Live by Claude Steiner. Remember, I am summarizing what I remember from an old history class over ten years ago, and I was unable to find the sources my teacher used. But if a person breaks their loser script before an age, say 25, then they are simply an anti-script because their patterns of life were not ingrained enough, so to speak.