Happiness comes from feeling in control

Some people would call me a control freak. It isn’t that I panic when things get chaotic. It is that when things get chaotic, my first instinct to find the control I have within the craziness.

I am not concerned with every crazy aspect. I want to know what I can influence. That points me to the things I can do something about. There is no sense worrying about the things that you don’t control. But your actions matter and the things that you take ownership of will make the difference in most situations.

Years ago, I went white water rafting. I was getting married, and it was a fun way to get together with friends and have a little adventure before tying the knot. We spent a few days in West Virginia in a cabin. The day came for us to raft and so we loaded up some old school buses and went to the bank of the river.

Immediately we realized we were a bit out of our element, but we had a blast. We stopped to jump off a ledge into the river. We swam in calm parts of the water. We hit a few class 3 rapids.

But as we traveled down the river, the water started to intensify. At one point the guide stopped us and went over some rules. It was basic stuff that we heard several times on the trip. This time what he said gave a little different instruction, hinting at dangers that lie ahead.

But we had confidence. As we headed for a strange hole in the middle of the river, we felt the water splashing our face and tried hard to keep control of the raft. But we couldn’t. Instead, it threw us from the boat in a violent thrust.

The whole ordeal felt like slow motion. As I splashed in the water, I immediately went into control mode. I knew I couldn’t control most of what was happening. But I did have a few slivers of control here and there.

I clung to that control. I strategized how I would extricate myself from the situation to live another day. As we travelled down the class five rapid clinging to our life vests, thoughts of a devastating ending flashed through our minds. But thinking about what could happen wasn’t the best way to survive.

The best way to survive was to keep our heads and NOT panic. We had to find the ways we could control the situation. Then, we had to focus on what we could control, not the chaos that swirled all around us.

I’ve also been in meetings where a business feels like it got tossed into the class five waters. Panic ensues and drowning seems inevitable. The best leaders resist the urge to panic. Instead, they find the things that they still have control over and shift the focus to those elements.

In your personal life, when everything gets turned upside down, do you panic? Do you play the victim and wait for a knight in shining armor, or do you take control and figure it out?

Years ago, a psychology researcher named Angus Campbell found that happiness in life is tied to control. Campbell said, “Having a strong sense of controlling one’s life is a more dependable predictor of positive feelings of well-being than any of the objective conditions of life we have considered.”

In other words, having control is correlated with being happy. Yet being a control freak is thought to be a recipe for anxiety and stress, not happiness. If the need for control becomes obsessive, I’m sure this can be true.

But in the chaotic world we live in, we need to focus on what we can control. We can’t get caught up in external events. We can’t wait for someone to come help. Even if our knight in shining armor is racing towards us, we still should look at what we can influence to create a positive outcome.

By taking control, we don’t always make the right choices. But at least we have the freedom to choose. We properly honor that freedom in life by being willing to step in and take control in our life. That feeling of freedom that comes from making choices means a happier, more positive life experience.