Another tendency of humans is to be overly controlling of outcomes. We humans tend to control results of incidents in life. It is fine to be expectant of certain events in life. For instance, it is required to have expectations from marriage, school, life, office etc. But one must not become obsessive with the results.
The prime reason why being overly controlling of results lead to unhappiness is that life is uncertain and one cannot accurately predict what life has in store for one person. This is why having too much of expectations from life plays a spoilsport for us. It is difficult to control what life throws at us. Life and time can be uncertain and will never give us control. But what matters is what we make out of it.
The people who do not agree to this are the ones who grow unhappy with life. It is perfectly okay to have expectations, but it is not good to be authoritative and seek control of everything. Research shows that even people who have high desire for control but have a perception of low levels of control suffer from depression.
Moreover, the people who seek more control tend to take more risks in life and have more superstitions. These people tend to take decisions that involve unnecessary levels of high risk and believe in superstitions as well. The reason behind why such people are more superstitious is that superstitions make these people feel good about situations and makes them apparently have an illusion of control over situations. The harmonious way of following passion is to pursue it along with a balance in other things in life.
Being too much authoritative of the results of life’s situations makes us feel frustrated when outcomes are not according to our expectations. They also tend to make us more risk-taking in decisions and make us sacrifice other important things in life by losing balance between them.
So, how do we find how much of authority is fine and how much is not? For measuring the optimal amount of authority required in life, we use a tool called ‘Maximizer Scale’. Seeking some degree of control is healthy. Those who seek to control at an optimal level are poised to achieve more.
The method to find out if the amount of control is right or not is to do a self-assessment. A tool developed by Jerry Burger, called the Desirability of Control (DC) scale helps in this regard. It has 20 questions in all, which are related to you as a person. Get hold of a sample DC scale and assess your desirability of control.
The second tool is the maximizer scale. This tool is based on the belief that those who seek control over things are also perfectionists. This tool contains 10 questions related to your attitudes towards perfectionism. Get hold of a sample maximizer scale and assess yourself. If your score in Desirability of Control scale is above 120 or in Maximizer scale is above 50, then you are certainly over controlling in nature. If the score in Desirability of Control tool is less than 80 or the score in Maximizer scale is less than 25, then you have low control seeking tendencies.
These tools will certainly help to find out how much authoritative you are as a person.