Emotions and Control

E

veryone who has absorbed even the basic principles of psychological self-awareness and self-knowledge understands that it is impossible to directly control other people. We can only control our own thoughts and our own behaviours – we cannot control other people’s thoughts, behaviours or emotions

.

However, it is also important to understand that we cannot control our own

emotions

either.

If we stand at the edge of a cliff and hurl a stone with all our might into the ocean below, our only choice is whether to throw the stone or not – once the stone has left our hand, it is utterly out of our control.

In the same way, once we believe certain premises within our own minds, the emotions that will result from those premises

are utterly out of our control

.

Expectations: An Example

When I am working on a book, I plan to spend a certain number of hours a day writing. On many days, however, my plans get interrupted, because something else comes up which takes a higher priority. Perhaps there is a problem with the Freedomain Radio website, or a podcast I uploaded got cut off, or is mislabelled, or a listener wants to have a conversation about an immediate issue, or an employee calls with an urgent question and so on.

At times, I find myself getting irritated if a seemingly-endless stream of minor interruptions prevents me from getting to my

“real” task. I set myself up to begin writing, get my coffee, reread what I’ve previously written, raise my hands to type – and then receive a message which prevents me from getting started.

If my thought is:

I must write

, then naturally every “interruption” moves me further back from achieving that goal. I then feel acute frustration, just as if I were trying to juggle and people were tossing squash balls at my head.

My temptation on these days is to externalize and trivialize the cause of these

“interruptions.” What I basically say to myself is: “

Jesus Christ! I’ve been trying to get down to writing for the past three hours, and everybody wants a piece of me, and I just can’t get down to what I

need

to get done! If I don’t get this book finished, then I won’t have enough money to advertise in two to three months, because book income is more steady than donations! And why is it that everybody picks

today

to need something from me – can’t they manage things themselves for once, just for today?

”

And so on, and so on. We all know this mantra, which is:

“I am the hard-done-by victim just trying to get something

done

, while every incompetent on the planet keeps interrupting me when they could take two seconds to figure out the answer to their question!”

When I notice myself sinking into this convenient little swamp of mythology

, I try to reshape my thoughts – usually with great success – along the following lines:

“

You are the victim? What nonsense! You left every instant messaging program on the planet open on your desktop. You checked your e-mail. You had a look at what was happening on the Freedomain Radio Board. You picked up the phone. Also,

you

are the one deciding what is a higher priority than writing – no one is ordering you to do that! If you decide to republish a podcast because it was cut off, that is your choice – you could very easily keep writing and simply republish the podcast later. And finally, is the fact that people need some sort of feedback from you, or are providing you with helpful information, really such an enormous problem? Would you be more content if you had five listeners, and no capacity to do this amazing job on a full-time basis? Then you would certainly have

fewer

interruptions, but your irritation at being interrupted would be replaced by despair about the planet as a whole!”

In other words, what I can do in these situations is simply to

realign my expectations

– which has everything to do with remembering that my core goal every day is to move this philosophical conversation forward in some manner – or, at least, prevent it from being moved backwards!

Thus on any given day, my purpose is not to write, or to respond to an e-mail, or to publish a podcast, but rather to do whatever it takes to move this philosophical conversation forward!

When I remember that, I no longer view interruptions as “interruptions.”

I remember that every day is a kind of dance between what you can plan for, and what you cannot. I remember that it is great to have specific goals, but they must all be measured relative to the overall goal.

Obviously, having a podcast out there that ends abruptly does not move this conversation forward, but rather irritates listeners, consumes bandwidth since they have to re-download, wastes time on the part of the listeners because they have to reload the podcast and find where it was cut off, then listen through to the end, and so on.

Since my goal is to bring as positive an experience as possible to this conversation – since heaven knows philosophy is already hard enough – clearly the immediate requirement to re-upload the podcast takes precedence over writing a few more pages in a book that will not be out for several months.

Also, it is important to remember that all days are part of a generalized “bell curve” of interruptions. Some days you can sail through with barely a ripple, while on other days, messages pile up seemingly without end. At some point, I will either explode with frustration, or surrender to the reality of where a particular day is on the bell curve, laugh about it, and put aside my writing until later.

I do find that, once I realign my expectations to take into account the empirical facts of what is happening –

interruptions are piling up

– then I find another interruption funny, rather than annoying.

Recognizing the

“push and pull” of life – that we must make plans, but that our plans will be interrupted – takes a great deal of stress out of every day. Clearly, we cannot control interruptions – else they would scarcely be called interruptions – but we can recognize that interruptions are inevitable, and adjust our expectations accordingly.

Certainly, we will all face a rather final

“interruption” called death – and so I try my best not to be too bothered by any interruption that is less significant!