How do you feel about uncertainty?

If you’re like most people, you probably don’t like it. In fact, you may even hate it, especially if you’ve experienced a lot of instability and unexpected hardship in life. 

To be fair, life usually feels pretty good when it's going according to our plan, when we have a good idea of what to expect and what we can count on, and if life starts deviating from our expectations, it can feel incredibly disorienting and stressful. This is when we might start leaning into control as a coping mechanism. 

The irony is, much of life is uncertain and we don't always have as much control as we think we do, or, as Harvard social psychologist Ellen Langer says, “uncertainty is the rule not the exception; everything is always changing.” 

Langer came up with the phrase “illusion of control” in 1975 as part of a series of studies she conducted as a graduate student to test a hypothesis that people tend to overestimate their ability to control the uncontrollable.  

Spoiler: Her research did support that hypothesis, but what Langer also found as she continued her research career is that many of us will not only overestimate our ability to control the uncontrollable, but we will sometimes also underestimate our ability to control the things that we actually do have autonomy over, such as our mindset.

Understanding this paradox can be helpful when managing our mental and emotional wellbeing because it can help us to move from a state of powerlessness to one of greater agency, especially when we can’t change what’s happening around us.

Being able to release control and embrace a certain level of uncertainty can also lead to unexpected possibilities and better outcomes that we may never have thought of or imagined.

More on the ‘Illusion of Control’

To test her original hypothesis, Langer studied people’s reactions to games of chance, such as playing the lottery or drawing a high card, and found that people tended to make irrational decisions when they had a perceived level of control over outcomes. 

For example, Langer and her colleagues created a lottery game for which there were two types of tickets, one with letters of the alphabet and one covered in symbols. 

Some of the participants were able to choose the type of ticket they wanted while others were assigned tickets. All the participants were later offered a chance to exchange their ticket for another in a lottery with better odds, and what the researchers found was that study participants who had chosen their ticket and chosen one with a familiar alphabet letter on it, were much more likely to hold on to their ticket.

In other words, the sense of agency as well as a sense of familiarity provided a false sense of certainty and influenced people to sacrifice a better outcome for themselves more times than not. 

Doesn’t really make sense, and yet, it’s not hard to understand why we might act in ways that don’t benefit us in the long run when we feel confident in our ability to achieve or attain a certain outcome.

Single-Minded Focus

The “illusion of control” can also show up when we’re acting from an implemental mindset, according to the Decision Lab, a behavioral design think tank, which describes this type of thinking as one that is focused solely on accomplishing a goal as opposed to reflecting on the potential outcomes of our actions.

For example, maybe we have a goal of getting into a particular school and, in spite of many obstacles, we persist in this goal without stopping to reflect on whether the tactics we’re taking are really in alignment with our values (i.e. taking on massive amounts of student loan debt). 

We essentially become so focused on achieving the goal and believing that we can get what we want that we lose sight of potentially better options and may stress ourselves out in the process. Plus, even if we do get what we want, we might have to put in a lot of work to maintain it. 

That’s not always easy to admit or catch, especially if we are goal-driven, motivated people, which Western society tends to reward. It’s also normal to want to protect against uncertainties that feel threatening or dangerous. 

However, if we are trying to control too much, especially those things that are beyond our control, it can blind us to better opportunities as well as contribute to anxiety, feeling irritable and pessimistic about life, and even feeling disconnected from ourselves and others. 

So what’s a different approach?

If we can catch ourselves trying to control and it’s leading to negative side effects, it can be helpful to shift our focus to more internal things that we do have control over, such as our thoughts, perceptions and feelings. 

For example, going back to the idea of trying to get into a specific school in spite a mountain of obstacles sitting in front of us, one strategy we could take would be to look at what are we telling ourselves about that goal and how that might be contributing to a feeling of helplessness?

If, for example, we’re telling ourselves that we will have failed if we don’t get in, then we will be more likely to try and control people, places and things in order to avoid feeling like a failure.

But if we can change the narrative to something more empowering, such as “I wish this would work out, but for whatever reason it’s not right now, so I’m going to head in another direction” and consciously look for the potential positives within the new direction, then we have taken more control of the situation.

And who knows what can happen if we open ourselves up to the possibility within that new direction, even if it feels unknown and uncertain?

It’s not always easy to let go of control, especially when the stakes are high or when things feel particularly uncertain, but in releasing the things we can’t control and focusing on what we can, which is us and how we’re showing up in the world, we will likely feel more in control.

One of the most difficult things to let go of is emotional pain and our reactions to and perceptions of past hurts, which can have a significant influence over our lives if we let them.

In this Reflections of Life interview, Edward Celnicker shares how he embraced vulnerability and changed the way he shows up in the world as a way to take back control of his life and the direction it was going.

To read more about Ellen Langer’s work, check out her newest book The Mindful Body, which explores how practicing more mindful ways of thinking can impact our health.

Additional Takes on the Paradox of Control

“How Much of Our Life Is Controllable?” via Psychology Today

“Why Losing Control Can Make You Happier” via Greater Good Magazine

“Why Letting Go of Control Can Help You Enjoy Life” via Very Well Mind