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Happiness, 4.01 (V) Week 4 Video 1 - The 4th Sin - Being Overly Control Seeking

[MUSIC] Hi, and welcome to week four of a life of happiness and fulfillment. I'd like to start out by saying Sawadee kha to my Thai and other friends. A lot of you wrote to me saying that you really enjoyed hearing these greetings from all around the world. So I'm gonna continue to do that through this week. We'll begin this week with a brand new happiness sin, as we do every week. This sin is being overly control-seeking. I'm pretty sure that you're quite familiar with this sin. Most of us have experienced other people's attempts at trying to control us. And if we're truly honest with ourselves, our own attempts to control them. If you're married, I'm pretty sure that at some point you will have wanted to control your spouses behavior. If only my husband could stop eating like a pig. You might have thought to yourself and try to control his eating behavior. Or, if only my wife would stop spending all this money on clothes, you may have thought. And try to control her shopping behavior. If by some miracle, neither you nor your spouse wanted to control each other, you might have wanted to control your kid's behavior. If only our kids knew how to behave in public spaces. You might have thought and tried to control their social behavior. Of course, our desire for control doesn't stop with our spouses or our kids, most of us want to control the others in our lives as well. Parents or relatives, friends, neighbors, colleagues, even our pets. Most of us feel if only everybody in the world behaved according to how I want them to behave, not only will I be happy, they will be happy too. Why, oh why can't people see how wise and well-meaning I am, and just obey me instead of doing things their way? Apart from wanting to control others, most of us also have the desire to control outcomes. We want to control the temperature in our room, the TV channels that we watch, the kinds of tasks that we get to work on in our jobs and pretty much everything else in-between. Why do we have such a strong desire to control the external environment? That is, control other people and the outcomes that occur to us. One reason is because we do better, both emotionally and physically, when we are in control. Here are just two examples of how being in control has a positive impact on us. In one study, which was done with rats, the experimenters gave these rats control over when they got to have coke. Yeah, I'm not talking about the popular soft drink here, I'm talking about the drug cocaine, or not. There is one set of rats had the freedom to partake of the drug whenever they wanted to. They just had to press a lever and they got high. The other set of rats did not get to choose when they had the drug. They were given the drug, cocaine, whenever the first set of rats chose to have it. Here's what the experimenters found. The health of both sets of rats that were given the drug suffered. They died earlier than a third set of rats, which were not given the cocaine. I feel sad for the rats, of course, and I hope these kind of experiments are not conducted in the future, but we did learn something interesting from this experiment. Findings show that the first set of rats, that is those rats that had control over when they got to partake of cocaine, had a lower mortality rate than the second set of rats. What this shows is, even if it comes to doing something harmful to yourself, having more control over your actions, is relatively more beneficial for your health. In another study conducted with human participants this time, residents at an old age home, one set of residents was given control over some choices they made. What plant to have in the room, actually whether to have a plant in the first place and if so, what plant to have. They also had control over which of two movies to watch the next week. Another set of participants was not given control over these choices. They were just handed a plant and not only that, they were also told that the nurses would take care of these plants. They weren't going to be given the opportunity to take care of them. And they were also not given control over which movies they would get to watch. They were just told which movies would be screened for them the next week. It turned out that having control over these seemingly trivial decisions, which plans to have and which movies to watch, had a significant effect on these residents emotional health and longevity. The residents who had control over these decisions were far happier than those who did not, specifically nearly half. 48% of those who were given control over their decisions reported becoming happier after the experiment started. Whereas only 25% of the group that were not given control reported becoming happier. What was even more striking in the study was that the residents who had control over the decisions actually lived longer on average, than those who did not have control. In the 18 month period following the experiment, only 7 of the 27 residents, in the choice condition, or about 15%, died. Now you might think that's a pretty high number, but remember these are residents at an old age home. By contrast, in the no choice condition, 13 of the 44 participants or residents, died, which is about 30%. Which is double the proportion of the residents in the choice condition. So what this shows you is that there is very strong evidence that having a sense of control, that is having the freedom to make choices, is a very, very important thing for us in our life. In fact, it is so important as we just saw in the study, it could actually be a matter of life and death. So given how important control is to our mental and physical well being, it shouldn't be surprising that many of us seek to control others and to control outcomes. And to some extent, it turns out that the desire to control others and outcomes is actually a good thing. Findings show, for example, that those with a greater desire for control tend to aim higher in life. They want to achieve more lofty things and they also end up achieving more. At the same time, however, what's also very clear is that there is a limit to how much we can control other people and outcomes. As life often reminds us, we can't control other people and outcomes all the time. This suggests that seeking too much control, that is being overly controlling, may not be a good thing. In other words, there seems to be a kind of ideal point on how much control we should seek. And seeking control beyond this point can be detrimental to our happiness levels. This brings up two questions. First, how do we figure out what's the ideal level of control seeking? The second question is, exactly how does being overly controlling lower happiness levels? And those are the questions to which I will turn in the next few videos. [FOREIGN] till then. [MUSIC]


[MUSIC] Hi, and welcome to week four of a life of happiness and fulfillment. I'd like to start out by saying Sawadee kha to my Thai and other friends. A lot of you wrote to me saying that you really enjoyed hearing these greetings from all around the world. So I'm gonna continue to do that through this week. We'll begin this week with a brand new happiness sin, as we do every week. This sin is being overly control-seeking. I'm pretty sure that you're quite familiar with this sin. Most of us have experienced other people's attempts at trying to control us. And if we're truly honest with ourselves, our own attempts to control them. If you're married, I'm pretty sure that at some point you will have wanted to control your spouses behavior. If only my husband could stop eating like a pig. You might have thought to yourself and try to control his eating behavior. Or, if only my wife would stop spending all this money on clothes, you may have thought. And try to control her shopping behavior. If by some miracle, neither you nor your spouse wanted to control each other, you might have wanted to control your kid's behavior. If only our kids knew how to behave in public spaces. You might have thought and tried to control their social behavior. Of course, our desire for control doesn't stop with our spouses or our kids, most of us want to control the others in our lives as well. Parents or relatives, friends, neighbors, colleagues, even our pets. Most of us feel if only everybody in the world behaved according to how I want them to behave, not only will I be happy, they will be happy too. Why, oh why can't people see how wise and well-meaning I am, and just obey me instead of doing things their way? Apart from wanting to control others, most of us also have the desire to control outcomes. We want to control the temperature in our room, the TV channels that we watch, the kinds of tasks that we get to work on in our jobs and pretty much everything else in-between. Why do we have such a strong desire to control the external environment? That is, control other people and the outcomes that occur to us. One reason is because we do better, both emotionally and physically, when we are in control. Here are just two examples of how being in control has a positive impact on us. In one study, which was done with rats, the experimenters gave these rats control over when they got to have coke. Yeah, I'm not talking about the popular soft drink here, I'm talking about the drug cocaine, or not. There is one set of rats had the freedom to partake of the drug whenever they wanted to. They just had to press a lever and they got high. The other set of rats did not get to choose when they had the drug. They were given the drug, cocaine, whenever the first set of rats chose to have it. Here's what the experimenters found. The health of both sets of rats that were given the drug suffered. They died earlier than a third set of rats, which were not given the cocaine. I feel sad for the rats, of course, and I hope these kind of experiments are not conducted in the future, but we did learn something interesting from this experiment. Findings show that the first set of rats, that is those rats that had control over when they got to partake of cocaine, had a lower mortality rate than the second set of rats. What this shows is, even if it comes to doing something harmful to yourself, having more control over your actions, is relatively more beneficial for your health. In another study conducted with human participants this time, residents at an old age home, one set of residents was given control over some choices they made. What plant to have in the room, actually whether to have a plant in the first place and if so, what plant to have. They also had control over which of two movies to watch the next week. Another set of participants was not given control over these choices. They were just handed a plant and not only that, they were also told that the nurses would take care of these plants. They weren't going to be given the opportunity to take care of them. And they were also not given control over which movies they would get to watch. They were just told which movies would be screened for them the next week. It turned out that having control over these seemingly trivial decisions, which plans to have and which movies to watch, had a significant effect on these residents emotional health and longevity. The residents who had control over these decisions were far happier than those who did not, specifically nearly half. 48% of those who were given control over their decisions reported becoming happier after the experiment started. Whereas only 25% of the group that were not given control reported becoming happier. What was even more striking in the study was that the residents who had control over the decisions actually lived longer on average, than those who did not have control. In the 18 month period following the experiment, only 7 of the 27 residents, in the choice condition, or about 15%, died. Now you might think that's a pretty high number, but remember these are residents at an old age home. By contrast, in the no choice condition, 13 of the 44 participants or residents, died, which is about 30%. Which is double the proportion of the residents in the choice condition. So what this shows you is that there is very strong evidence that having a sense of control, that is having the freedom to make choices, is a very, very important thing for us in our life. In fact, it is so important as we just saw in the study, it could actually be a matter of life and death. So given how important control is to our mental and physical well being, it shouldn't be surprising that many of us seek to control others and to control outcomes. And to some extent, it turns out that the desire to control others and outcomes is actually a good thing. Findings show, for example, that those with a greater desire for control tend to aim higher in life. They want to achieve more lofty things and they also end up achieving more. At the same time, however, what's also very clear is that there is a limit to how much we can control other people and outcomes. As life often reminds us, we can't control other people and outcomes all the time. This suggests that seeking too much control, that is being overly controlling, may not be a good thing. In other words, there seems to be a kind of ideal point on how much control we should seek. And seeking control beyond this point can be detrimental to our happiness levels. This brings up two questions. First, how do we figure out what's the ideal level of control seeking? The second question is, exactly how does being overly controlling lower happiness levels? And those are the questions to which I will turn in the next few videos. [FOREIGN] till then. [MUSIC]