The Three Emotional Programs for Happiness: Power and Control

Mar 16

The Three Emotional Programs for Happiness: Power and Control

Posted in Techniques

This entry is part 2 of 6 in the series Breaking the Emotional Cycle

Breaking the Emotional Cycle: Introduction
The Three Emotional Programs for Happiness: Power and Control
The Three Emotional Programs for Happiness: Esteem and Affection
The Three Emotional Programs for Happiness: Security and Survival
How Not to Get Swept Away By Emotions
The Welcoming Practice: Letting Go

What we think will make us happy generally won’t.

As Richard O’Connor explains in his book Happy at Last: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Finding Joy, the deep emotional programs of our minds have a bait-and-switch operation going on. Their agenda is to drive us to particular behaviours which will preserve our safety, our existence and our genetic heritage. In order to do this, they hold out the promise that those behaviours will make us happy. But if they did actually make us permanently happy, the drive would be gone and we would no longer take those actions.

It’s like the story in the Odyssey of the Lotus-Eaters, who ate a narcotic plant which made them happily apathetic. In fact, this is one reason that euphoric drugs like heroin are harmful: People who have all the happiness they want from the drug have no further motivation to do anything to help themselves or others.

photo credit: rumkolat

So, it seems as if we are faced with Hobson’s choice: Pursue the things that our deepest instincts tell us will make us happy, and we will not be happy. Pursue the things that will actually make us unconditionally happy, and we will probably die from self-neglect.

Fortunately, there is a third course, but it begins with an understanding of those happiness programs that drive us from within.

In last week’s post (Breaking the Emotional Cycle), I introduced you to the Centering Prayer tradition’s idea of the three “energy centres” or “emotional programs for happiness”: power/control, esteem/affection and security/survival. Today I want to focus on power/control.

photo credit: DSmous

Basically, power/control is the program that says, “If I can control the world around me, I will feel OK.” The problem with this program is that we can’t control the world around us, either collectively or individually. We can’t control extreme weather, for example. We can’t even collectively control the human world of economics, as the recent recession has demonstrated. The power/control agenda is subject to inevitable frustration, because ultimately we can’t control the world. (Nor would that be a good thing, in fact, if you think about it.)

The characteristic emotion driven by the program of power and control is anger. By expressing anger, we are attempting to control others and gain power over them by implying a threat: If you don’t give me what I want, I’ll hurt you. Now, anger gets abstracted away from this exact situation – you can be angry with a computer or a piece of string, which doesn’t have the capacity to be afraid – but that is the basic proposition of anger. The power and control agenda leads inevitably to bullying, subtle or overt.

photo credit: Furryscaly

I was thinking about power and control a while ago, and realised something. The people who are able to let go of the program of controlling people and things around them are the ones who have focussed on controlling themselves. I’m talking about the mystics and the meditators – because self-will is not the path to self-control, as we’ll discuss further in the course of this series. The path to self-control is to develop the authentic self which is no longer driven by the emotional programs for happiness, which doesn’t actually care about not being in total control of everything.

Although Centering Prayer arose out of the Christian tradition of the Benedictines, we can see parallels with the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism. Here’s my condensed paraphrase:

1. This whole thing is all messed up.
2. The reason is that we’re driven by our desires.
3. It’s possible to be free.
4. Freedom is achieved through thought, understanding and practice.

I’ll have a lot more to say about this when we get further through the series, but here’s today’s main point. The thing that can free you from the control of the agenda of being in control, the thing that can actually put you in control of your own reactions and responses, is this: Letting go of being in control.

photo credit: jurvetson

The emotional program of power/control repeats these words within us: “If I’m not the one in charge, if things aren’t going as I decide, I will be miserable”. As small children, we’re confronted all the time with a world that isn’t in our control. We’re hungry, cold, hot, sore, uncomfortable, and there’s nothing we can do about it. It seems like if we can make other people do things for us to fix those problems, we are happier – but if we can’t, it’s devastating, it’s the end of the world. And sooner or later, no matter how indulgent our parents are, we are going to run up against a situation in which we are not in control and can’t make anyone else fix it, and that will be distressing.

At this point we have a choice: We can accept how the world is constituted and that we will not always get what we want (and sometimes will get what we don’t want), and move on with life. Or we can struggle for more power and more control so that we don’t have to feel like that again – but we always will.

I read recently about a millionaire European who came to the realisation that the five-star lifestyle he was living was bizarre and ridiculous. He’s liquidating his assets, giving most of them to charity and is going to live in a modest dwelling on a modest income. He believes he’ll be much happier, and I think he’s right. It’s not the solution for everyone, but it’s an example of what I’m talking about: Releasing the continual grasping after power and control.

photo credit: bwhistler

You’ll notice I haven’t gone into detail about exactly how this is achieved. That’s because I’ll be talking about it much more later in the series. For now, take a look at my page on the Relaxation Response Practice and the Welcoming Prayer, and think about how those practices build a habit and an attitude of letting go.

Next week, I’ll cover the second of the three emotional programs: Esteem and affection.

UPDATE: I’ve now revised the material in this series and turned it into a self-reflection process as part of my ebook, Your Emotional Hamster Wheel and How to Get Off It. It’s included when you sign up for my free Simple Stress Management Techniques course.

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