The Illusion of Control

We like to believe that we are in control of our destiny, but this is only an illusion. The illusion of control exists only when you restrict your attention to the few things that you can influence.

Trying to get control of everything will lead you to lose control, but more importantly, lose time and the ability to appreciate life.

What you control is small compared to what you can't control

You can't control when it rains, you can't control the way other people drive, and you can't control if a downturn in the economy wipes out your company or personal wealth.  As much as you try, you really only influence things -- you do not control them.

We confuse the fact that we can influence a few things with the notion that we can control everything.

For example, we like to believe that we are in control of our bodies, but are we?  People that learn to control some aspect of their bodies (athletes, ballet dancers, martial artists, contortionists) spend about 5 years with full time training to develop that level of control.  B

ut learning precise control of the body does not translate into other kinds of body control, i.e. ballerinas can't break boards and martial artists can't do swan lake.

The average person thinks he controls his body because of restricting attention to day to day activities. Most of our day to day activities do not require much in the way of body control.

The easiest way to see that we don't control our bodies is to expand our vision to include old age.  Old age makes us lose control of different body processes regardless of how much control that you believe that you had in your youth.  It may be different for each person, but we lose sharpness in our vision, clarity in our hearing, and control over our limbs.

We can filter out images of old people with walkers or electric wheel chairs to give ourself the illusion that we are in control, but the reality is that we are not.


You may influence your body, but you do not control it.

People seek control to avoid pain and get what they want.  There is no doubt that through education and skill building you can do this to some extent.  But when the pursuit of control dominates your ability to appreciate the world you can easily lose years of your life without realizing it.

Devoting your energy to getting control of things is likely to cause you to lose control.  Some people like getting directions, but very few people like to be controlled.  Try to control all the people around you and you will lose them.

Seeking to control people is the fastest way to lose them 

Parents who try to control their children will often lose them and wonder what happened.  It only takes one half of a couple to try to control the other person before the relationship becomes doomed to failure.  The irony is that the controlling person will often assume that the relationship failed because they were not controlling enough!

As Stephen Covey suggests, every relationship has a value, just like a bank account.  Do something for the other person and the value of the account goes up.

When you attempt to control other people you are making a withdrawal from that account, and continual attempts to control someone else will bankrupt that account.

Remember, that others can see constant suggestions as a sign that you are trying to control them.  Instead wait for people to ask your opinion rather than just volunteering it all the time.  It does not matter whether you are able to see ways in which other people can improve their lives, worry about your life -- it is up to them to work on theirs.

The way to a happy and productive life is to understand the illusion of control and to move to a position of wanting to influence others but accepting and being happy if that does not happen.

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