Control

If you are anything like me, and probably just about every other person in the world, you probably enjoy having things go your way. It is nice to see things go the way they are supposed to, to see your efforts be rewarded with a satisfying outcome, to have others understand you and think the best of you. If life always worked out this perfectly, well… I don’t know if we could call it life, but it sounds like it would be nice! 

Whether we are consciously thinking about these things or not, if we take an honest look at ourselves we often operate from this way of thinking. We are motivated for things to go our way and feel good, and even when our motives seem altruistic there is almost always something we are getting from the specific outcome. It might sound like a pessimistic way of seeing things but when we boil it down, we realize that we desperately want to be in control, and we will find ways to exert our will on people or situations to try to ensure what we want to happen. Now it is important to note that it is not always a bad thing to influence situations or people for intended outcomes, however we can often find ourselves living from a false sense of control in our lives - either trying to grasp too much control, or alternatively not taking ownership of ourselves and what is in our control. 

Though the idea of control is pretty easy to grasp, seeing it at work in our lives can seem very deceptive and elusive. Because our eyes are so fixed on what we see in our lives, we lose sight of what is in our control and what we can realistically do to determine or influence those things. 

So let’s look at the first extreme. At times we can feel the sense that if only we could do something more or have a say or change someone’s mind, that we can fix the situation. On one hand we can see our attempts to influence people/things as successful and we can feel satisfied knowing our efforts got us somewhere. But on the other hand, what we inadvertently end up doing is bearing a growing burden for being in charge of things that we ultimately are not able to manage. And when things go wrong, or our efforts are not producing the desired results, we feel lost, out of control, overwhelmed, on edge. Anxiety is a close friend to those in this extreme.

So what about the second extreme? At other times we can feel so out of control that we experience discouragement, despair, hopelessness, and helplessness. This might be due to circumstances that are constantly feeling like they are spiraling out of control, or how other people treat you day in and day out. It might come in the face of you giving your best effort countless times and just getting the same result. We naturally get discouraged during these times in our lives, but it can go so far as to change the way we see reality and our place in it. We start to believe that we can’t do anything about our situation, that our efforts and intentions don’t matter, and that maybe we don’t matter either. Depression is a close friend to those in this extreme.

In both extremes, we are failing to see the world and our own agency in a realistic manner. Using this way of thinking, we need to learn how to focus on the things that are in our control and accept the things that are not in our control. A responsible acceptance if you will, or on the flip side, a peace filled initiation that embraces the tension we find ourselves in life. It is good to be motivated by our desire for things to go “well”, but we also need to accept things when they do not and learn to be okay in those moments. This simple, yet often challenging, change in perspective can help us fend off unneeded distress and allow us to experience more fulfillment in our lives.