Control
All of us have a desire for control in our lives. Control means that we can influence events enough that we can predict the future. Since not being able to predict the future is scary, we strongly desire control not just over big things such as what we do at work, but also the little things such as how the dishes get washed.
When we lack control, we have significantly negative emotional responses. The first response to a lack of control is anger. We are tempted to use aggression to gain back our control. If we experience a loss of control over and over again, we eventually stop being angry and begin to be depressed. All of a sudden we are not able to take control even over the things that are rightfully under our control. This is the learned helplessness that psychologist Martin Seligman identified.
But since every single person desires control, and lots of it, there are many conflicts the minute more than one person is in the same area. We all want the remote; we all want to say which restaurant we will go to; we all want to be able to step on the brake pedal in the car even if we are in the passenger seat. When we don’t get what we want, naturally, we get angry and become unpleasant to be around.
In order to get around this, we can make conscious decisions to let go of control in some areas. For example, it is reasonable for people to have turns with the remote since everyone wants it. It is also important to understand where our control ends and someone else’s begins. For example, a controlling person may feel that he or she gets to decide when a job is done correctly, whether or not the controlling person has any actual authority, which is annoying to the person doing the job. The excuse might be, “I should have control because I know how to do this job correctly.” Yet everyone has the right to do the jobs that affect themselves and also the right to try a job and make mistakes in it during the learning process.
In actuality, we have a lot less control than we assume. We cannot control the behaviors of another driver or the person ahead of us in line at the grocery. We cannot control everything (or even very much of) what a spouse does, and raising kids is an exercise in gradually losing control across an eighteen year period.
When we are realistic about where our control is and we respect the rights of other people to have their locus of control, then life becomes a lot more pleasant because we are not angry or depressed all the time.