It also implies that it’s not down to you, but to some sort of chance.
Outcomes of our actions are influenced by our actions, and are also influenced by external forces—often ones we don’t know about in advance. Believing that fact can plausibly have a negative impact on one’s motivation and performance. But there is also a positive aspect to having your locus of control moved outward, other than the whole accurate beliefs thing: a poor outcome is less indicative of poor performance, and a very good outcome doesn’t have to reflect an outlier performance one is doomed to regressed away from, but merely an outlier event, unrelated to your skill level—a skill level which surely isn’t waning to the detriment of your performance in status-granting contests, no sir.
Outcomes of our actions are influenced by our actions, and are also influenced by external forces—often ones we don’t know about in advance. Believing that fact can plausibly have a negative impact on one’s motivation and performance. But there is also a positive aspect to having your locus of control moved outward, other than the whole accurate beliefs thing: a poor outcome is less indicative of poor performance, and a very good outcome doesn’t have to reflect an outlier performance one is doomed to regressed away from, but merely an outlier event, unrelated to your skill level—a skill level which surely isn’t waning to the detriment of your performance in status-granting contests, no sir.