The Illusion of Control

Control is something that most of us would like to have over our lives. We tend to get irritated and reactive when things do not go our way or the way we expect them to.

Letting go of control is one of the biggest challenges we face as human beings. As humans we are fraught with desires, and when desires are frustrated, it tends to lead to emotional reactions such as anger, disappointment, sadness and sometimes shock. 

In my experience, there are three things that we look to control in our lives: the outcomes of our efforts, the outcomes of our experiences and the outcomes of our interaction with others. To discuss them at length will go beyond the scope of this article but here is my attempt to explain each briefly.

Outcomes of our efforts

Most of us think that we should be rewarded if we put in the effort to achieve something. Most times we believe that the amount of effort is proportional to the reward. In reality, all we can do is to do our best.

For example, many plans around the world, most made many months in advance, were cancelled when the spread of the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) worldwide became critical at the end of January this year. The same thing happened during the SARS epidemic in 2003/2004. There are always going to be external factors or extenuating circumstances that will be beyond our control despite our best efforts. For me, the most recent incident was my heart attack after a basketball game on 18 February 2020 (will write more about that another time). 

Outcomes of our experiences

Almost all of us want to experience only good things. As humans, it is normal to seek good experiences and avoid bad ones; to seek survival and success. Many of us go to great lengths to avoid bad experiences, and when they happen, we want to quickly get out of them to feel good again. 

For example, when we go on a vacation, we look forward to good experiences such as good service, nice weather and smooth travel. When these desires are frustrated, we get reactive and prickly because the experiences we are seeking are not fulfilled.

What usually happens when we get too caught up in only seeking good experiences is that we deny or suppress the bad ones. Heavy and perceived negative feelings such as rage and grief are not expressed or experienced fully and they get hung up in our psyches and our physical bodies.

Outcomes of our interaction with others

Among the three outcomes we attempt to control in our lives, this is probably the one we struggle with the most. This is also closely linked to the desire for control of our experiences as mentioned above. In our interaction with people, we usually want them to agree with us and see our points of view. Disagreements tend to bring up our fears and feelings of rejection, disappointment and, sometimes, invalidation.

It is in our nature to want to be closer to others and relate better with them. When these attempts are met with resistance, we tend to use anger, guilt, invalidation and other forms of manipulation to control the outcomes of these attempts at relating.

 In our attempts to control how others react towards us, we tend to overlook the fact that everyone has free will and any clash of wills has a tendency to lead to a breakdown in the relating between people.

The way forward

The first thing to recognise is that attempting to control the above-mentioned outcomes usually leads to disappointment and suffering. We suffer because we are attempting to control things that we have very little control over, especially people. 

The only things we have real and absolute control over are our choices and responses to what life brings forth. Feeling disappointed when our desires are frustrated is part of being human. How we deal with these disappointments will determine how much suffering we cause others and ourselves.

Many spiritual traditions encourage the practice of letting go and surrendering. Some preach surrendering to God, while others expound the virtues of accepting “what is”. Even if some do not believe in God or a higher power, accepting what is currently happening and how people are showing up in our lives and will bring more grace and peace of mind.

So what is it that we need to accept and learn to gain this grace and peace of mind? To have these, there is a need to accept and learn three things:

-      that there are things beyond our control despite all our best efforts to succeed; that all we can really do is our best and let go of the outcome,

-      that ups and downs are part of life and learn to ride the waves of our emotions and experiences, and,

-      that we can only change ourselves and not others; that we can only inspire others to change but we cannot do the actual changing for them.

One simple practice to learn to accept things as they are is to notice nature, for example, the rising and setting of the sun or the changing of the seasons. No matter how much we wish for the sun not to rise or the season to stay the same, both will inevitably happen and also in their own time. There is nothing we can do to change or control these things.

A world-renowned author and speaker once said: “If you want real control, drop the illusion of control; let life have you. It does anyway. You’re just telling yourself the story of how it doesn’t.”

So what are you attempting to control today?