The law of control says that we feel happy about ourselves to the degree to which we feel, we are in control of our own life. When we give up the control to our life to others or feel that external circumstances or people are controlling us, we feel unhappy. Psychologists today agree that presence or absence of control is the critical factor in stress or lack of stress, happiness or unhappiness.
We do not have control over everything in life and that’s what makes life, life. In life we have control on some things like planning to study something, or deciding on a partner and be a source of peace for your partner, or working out to be healthy but at the same time we do not have control over many other things like not getting the admission in the program I wanted to study, or getting love from the partner I have chosen or despite of working out and make healthy choices, getting diagnosed with cancer etc. We all can find examples from our lives, where we can decide to do things or make choices but things does not always happen the way we had envisioned while making the decision or making the choice. This is life and we have to accept it as it is. We do not have the control to even change it.
Does it mean that since we do not have control over our lives, then we will always be unhappy and should we just accept that life is cruel and just wait for death, to find peace? The answer is NO.
The greatest control we have been given is the control over our minds and how we think. The control over our thinking is all we need to be able to lead a happy life and to find the peace and satisfaction, in the times when nothing seems to be in control. Its not easy but we can train ourselves and it is in our control to train our thinking. Thinking is what makes us feel good or bad, happy or unhappy, so we can feel happy in any situation by just controlling the way we think.
If we train our mind to think in a positive way, when we do not have control over something, positive thinking can give us the prospective that every thing seems to feel like working to help us move in the direction of our goal.
Dr. Martin Seligman conducted a 22 years of research and concluded that people are optimistic or pessimistic depending on their how they interpret the events. We all have perceptions about everything around us. The perceptions are based on our interpretation and that interpretation comes from how we think. We can interpret a situation in what ever way we want, we have 100% control over that, so frame or reframing is all it takes to be happy as we are in control of that and it only needs a bit of intentionality in thinking in the beginning and later it becomes a habit.
Do not give up control to your thinking or do not let it run on auto- pilot. You have power to lead a happy life, put it to use.
