The Illusion of Control:
The said theory, which was named by Ellen Langer, always captures the minds of an individual. It reflects the tendency of a human being to believe that it can control the outcomes that it demonstrably does not influence and people tend to over-estimate their ability to control events.
Live examples in our activities would include when a person is playing in the casino or at home while playing Ludo, one starts throwing the dice harder to ascertain more rolls of it so as to get the desired number; Gazing harder at the eyes of the opponent in a staring contest so as to intimidate or compel the other person to look away and eventually lose; landing harder and constant punches on the Hit Me Up toy so as to flatten it and not able to bounce back; a tennis player would like to plan to be in the shoes of Goran Ivanisevic- to hit the fastest of aces continuously to demolish his opponent.
We also tend to try to put everything in our lives in a well chalked out plan so as to have certain desires accomplished in the end. We start planning for our children and put up controlled activities of theirs; We decide to plan the most rigorous of schedules for ourselves by drawing a heavy diet chart and exercise schedule to obtain a flat stomach loaded with some abs in it without even realising whether our body is fit enough to take that schedule; We impose such strict schedules for our spouses as well as children and create such a dominating atmosphere so as to ensure that they remain in the within the strict confines of our company; We start saving and saving and saving and saving our money for the future and stop buying through the luxuries in the present as if the finances would end by the next two decades or the entire financial markets crash or melt by then, probably because of an alien invasion or a World War X.
All things done in an effort to achieve the desires in a particular manner as we had dreamt of. But do we achieve our goals through this? If not then how do we position ourselves to dispense with this future of uncertainty of not getting the desires fulfilled. The element of Fear of failure or of losing or being deprived of the desires thus keeps haunting us for the entire life which instigate us to become a prisoner to our own Control Panel.
It’s just synonymous to holding the grains of sand or a cube of ice as tightly as possible to make it a part of our system. We keep growing our control over it with the mindset to never lose it but the nature of the object in our hands was never meant to be controlled in such a manner.
Just like a Polar Bear lives and withstands the vagaries of nature in the form of extreme temperatures and avalanches, a jellyfish sails through the turbulent nature of the freshwater, vegetations such as trees, plants etc stand through the typhoons, storms etc and keep blooming through different courses of troubled seasons and they bear fruit at the time whenever they have to. All beings neither think that they are in control of the Elements of Nature nor do they feel the need for controlling the eventual result of the nature. They just Be.
So how difficult is to just Be ?? Whenever we are in the middle of a situation or an event, our natural instincts have the ability to deal with the same. More often than not we just need to do the simplest of the things. Just be in the moment and experience it rather than focussing on the final outcome. As it was quoted in one of the epic movies Kung Fu Panda – “There is no Secret Ingredient. It’s just You”
Just Believe in You and in the magic of Being You.
