Psychologists use a procedure called “The Rubber Hand Illusion” to challenge an individual’s sense of body ownership. A recently published study showed that schizophrenics – who already exhibit a weak sense of self – experienced the illusion to a greater degree than healthy controls.

Other research suggests that focused physical exercise can help improve body ownership and thereby alleviate some symptoms of schizophrenia.

Body Ownership and “The Rubber Hand Illusion”

In the “The Rubber Hand Illusion,” participants begin to perceive a rubber hand as if it was a part of their own body. The experiment is fairly simple, but it can have some wild effects.

Researchers hide one of your hands behind a small sheet and then put a rubber hand into view. They then stroke a paintbrush along both your real hand (the one that’s hidden), and the rubber one.

What happens among two thirds of healthy participants is that they begin to perceive that the sensations of the paintbrush are actually coming from the rubber hand, not their real one. When participants are then asked to close their eyes and point toward their real hand, many will point closer toward the rubber one instead.

The “Rubber Hand Illusion” is a play on vision, touch, and body posture (proprioception). Often the stronger the effect, the less someone has a true sense of “body ownership.” To get a better idea on how the experiment works, you can check out a video of the illusion below:

Schizophrenia and “The Rubber Hand Illusion”

Those with schizophrenia are already known to have a poor concept of self, a big part of which includes their sense of “body ownership.”

In a recently reported study, schizophrenics were shown to have a much more heightened effect when undergoing this “Rubber Hand Illusion.” When asked to point toward their real hand, schizophrenics pointed significantly closer to the rubber one than their real one when compared to healthy controls. One participant in the study even reported floating completely above their body for about 15 minutes – a very rare case of an “out of body experience” (OBE) being spontaneously produced in the laboratory.

These findings fit perfectly with the already existing theory that those with schizophrenia have a weaker sense of self and body ownership.

The Importance of Physical Exercise for Schizophrenics

Previous research has shown that physical exercise can help reduce symptoms of schizophrenia (see here and here).

This is because physical exercise, especially focused activities like yoga and dance, can help improve an individual’s body awareness and body ownership.

The thesis of Aboujaoude’s book is that the world wide web can have a very profound affect on our sense of self. In fact, it can cause a kind of “digital divide” between our digital self, how we often think and behave online, and our offline self, how we often think and behave in face-to-face, “real world” interactions.

Aboujaoude has observed this divide in many of his own patients who engage heavily in online behavior – anywhere from creating fakes profiles on dating sites to impulsive online shopping to delusional thinking about reality (to the point where individuals begin to consider the reality of virtual worlds like Second Life and World of Warcraft more real than their lives offline).

Some of the case studies and examples in Virtually You are clearly reflective of individuals who already have a propensity for mental disorders. The internet just provided an outlet that exacerbated the problem, and clearly not everyone who engages in online behavior is going to develop a mental disorder.

However, the bigger lesson in Aboujaoude’s book is that the internet does play a very causal role in our lives and well being – and thus it is important to be very mindful of our online behavior. In addition to his case studies and anecdotes about patients and friends, Aboujaoude shares a lot of compelling research in psychology, neuroscience, economics, and sociology that seems to indicate that in many ways the internet is a unique kind of environment that creates a very different kind of self-perception (one which can affect both our online and offline behavior).

The author identifies several negative personality traits that tend to manifest in our e-personality or digital self:

Delusions of Grandeur

To many, the internet holds great promises of freedom, wealth, power, and opportunity.

One great example of this is the dot com bubble. When it first began, many people jumped into their own online business expecting easy money and overnight success. And while many companies did experience some temporary success, once the bubble burst they quickly discovered just how much of it was a false dream.

Of course, the internet can be a powerful tool that does increase opportunity for success, but for many it can also create delusions of grandeur and omnipotence. While on the web, it’s very easy to feel like “the sky is the limit” – thus everyone seems to think they are capable of some share of the fame, success, or power that the internet seems to be so abundant with.

This exaggerated perception only feeds our egos and causes us to act with “irrational exuberance” – often leading to some ultimately destructive behaviors and big disappointments. The dot com bubble is one of the most salient examples of this, but false hopes are built everyday when impressionable minds see the success experienced by YouTube sensations like Justin Bieber, or other internet success stories that seem to erupt almost spontaneously.

Everyday more and more people expect the internet to be their path to fame and fortune. In the book, Aboujaoude compares this exaggerated perception of opportunity to the California Gold Rush in the 19th century. And while the dot com bubble has already burst, Aboujaoude fears that – like a patient with bipolar disorder – more manic episodes are beginning to erupt due to the allure of success that plagues almost all corners of the internet.

Narcissism

Narcissism is a kind of excessive self-love, and another common byproduct of developing our e-personality or digital self. The fact is: due to our growing ability to customize and edit our online presence, it’s very easy to get caught in the trap of thinking we are more important than we really are. Anyone who uses sites like Facebook, YouTube, or Twitter has probably exaggerated some claims about themselves in order to seem more like their “ideal” self, even if it is just building your friends list so that you seem more popular.

Digital technology and the internet seem to provide us with a way to cover up our flaws and imperfections in a way we never could before. This includes anything from using photoshop to edit our pictures, to lying about our career on a forum or dating site, to acting with an inflated sense of self-importance while in a chatroom or forum. More and more, the gap between our “real self” and “digital self” seems to be growing greater and greater.

Similar to delusions of grandeur, the internet gives us an artificial sense of power over our own self-improvement and self-esteem. In some ways, Aboujaoude claims this reflects a drive for us to be more “God-like,” and the internet provides us with the tools to make this ideal self seem like more of a possibility than ever before.

With this kind of perceived opportunity, who would want to be tethered to the physical limitations of the real world? Why be old, short, fat, and bald when you can create a young, tall, dark, handsome version of yourself in a virtual world, like in Second Life? And instead of having to find a real girlfriend, you can just create an avatar of your ideal girlfriend? Many people are becoming increasingly infatuated with the freedom and customization of virtual worlds, and they are willing to neglect their offline lives in order to dedicate more and more time to their fantasies.

Aggression

This formation of a “digital self” often doesn’t just harm our own self-perception, but also the people we choose to treat while inhabiting this self. Because the internet can give us a superficial sense of power and authority, many people often abuse this power by hurting others. Cyberbullying especially is becoming a huge problem in schools everywhere. Some victims have been so badly harassed online that they have dropped out of school or even committed suicide.

Unlike traditional bullying, the identity of the cyberbully is unknown in almost half the cases. This kind of anonymity often causes individuals to act in ways far more cruelly and with less inhibition than they would in face-to-face interactions. In other words, the internet creates an environment that can often bring out the very worst in people. Once individuals begin hiding behind a mouse and keyboard, morality tends to be thrown out the window, because most people are never held accountable for their actions.

In addition, time spent in other virtual environments, such as in violent videogames, has also been shown to increase offline aggression in children, teens, and young adults. In a cross-cultural longitudinal study done by psychologist Craig Anderson, of the Center for the Study of Violence at Iowa State University, researchers studied 1,500 participants over the course of a year and found that individuals who played violent videogames on a regular basis were twice as likely to show aggressive tendencies later in the year (compared to those who were not engaged in these videogames). Researchers of the study attribute this effect in videogames to it’s interactive nature, and the idea that games often reward players for killing, and over time desensitive them to the moral consequences of violence.

Similar phenomenon of desensitization can also be seen in individuals who watch gory and disturbing videos online (such as terrorists getting their heads chopped off, or a woman stomping a helpless kitten to death with her stiletto heels). Many internet users show an offbeat curiosity for watching these kinds of videos, but they are also unaware of how these videos warp our perceptions of reality and habituate us to some truly violent and disturbing acts.

I remember getting my first dose of gory pictures (probably from a site like Rotten.com) when I was a young user of the internet. Since then I have seen many other disturbing images and videos, and over time I’ve noticed the “shock value” of many of these videos diminish – probably as a result of gradual desensitization. It’s important sometimes to take a step back and realize that these are real people doing really atrocious things, and we should be mindful of the curiosity and offbeat “entertainment” we sometimes get from viewing this kind of material.

Impulsivity

The ease of accessibility – and “instant gratification” – we often get from the internet makes us much more inclined to act impulsively. So many sites and online stores now have “one click” purchases and memberships, and this leaves us very little room to reflect on our decisions before making them.

Of course, things like impulsive shopping and gambling have existed long before the internet has. However, the internet seems to exacerbate the problem to an unprecedented level. A study published in a 2002 issue of the journal Psychology of Addictive Behaviors found that online gamblers were 3 times more likely to show signs of pathological gambling. And although there are no specific studies published yet on how the internet affects impulsive shopping, one has to wonder what role the web has played in the recent surge of consumer debt and credit card debt since the late 1990s.

Our consumerist culture thrives more and more on online shopping. Almost any item you want is just a few clicks away, whether on Amazon, Ebay, or craigslist. And now that our money has taken an intangible, digital form, it’s far easier for us to give into these temptations without considering the true long-term costs of our behavior.

Before the internet, buying something was a multi-step process. You had to physically leave your house, get in the car or walk to the store, pick-up the item, take the money out of your pocket, and hand it over to the cashier. Today, however, there is hardly any inconvenience, and there is similarly no potential for public scrutiny or shame in being a compulsive shopper. We can buy and buy, without ever feeling the repercussions or guilt (that is, until we get our bill the next month, and realize the real financial consequences from our impulsive decisions).

Infantile Regression and the Tyranny of the Emoticon

Aboujaoude is a big critic of emoticons and internet terminology. While he recognizes it as an interesting phenomenon from a linguistic perspective, he also strongly believes that it is contracting and regressing language in a destructive way.

“According to Brazilian linguist Sergio Costa, much of the communicating that happens online is in a childlike language. Just as children who do not master the conventions of language write in abbreviated code, rich in neologisms and pictorial characters, adults in their e-mails, blogs, and text messages adopt these less sophisticated forms of communication, willfully using lowercase when capitalization is indicated, and freely shortening and conflating words. The use of the emoticon represents an equally simple substitute for complex communication – who needs to carefully process feelings and logically organize thoughts before finally communicating a state of mind, when a simple hieroglyphics can convey everything…and nothing?”

Our need for speedy and immediate communication has caused us to abbreviate and over-simplify language to our own detriment. According to a 2005 study published in The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, many people are “overconfident in their ability to communicate sarcasm, seriousness, anger, and sadness over e-mail.” The study also shows that people were overconfident in their ability to detect these emotions via e-mail. This suggests that emoticons and common internet terminology are often inadequate to properly explaining our thoughts and emotions to others. It has reduced our digital self to an “infant-like” use of language, and in many ways has dumbed down a lot of online dialogue.

I will add that I think Aboujaoude’s criticisms of online terminology are a bit unfair. I find there to be an elegance and creativity in expressing myself in under 140 characters (such as in a tweet or Facebook status or text message). But I also think it’s important that we remain mindful of our contraction/”regression” of language throughout our online conversations – because while it may be useful in some contexts, it shouldn’t spill over into conversations that need more context and deeper thinking. If we lose the capacity to think out rational arguments and have deep and profound conversations, then I think we are going in the wrong direction. Clearly, as much as I love tweeting, I love writing lengthy and informative posts too. We need both in healthy communication.

Love and Sex Recalibrated

The internet is also greatly affecting our perceptions on relationships, love, and sex. You can’t visit a website or open your inbox without seeing some kind of spam or advertisement for how to improve your love life or sex life. We get exposed to sexual “ideals” and quick fixes on a daily basis, and these stimuli play a major role in how we perceive ourselves, our relationships, and our sexual preferences.

According to Aboujaoude, the internet and sex are inextricably intertwined. Data corroborated from comScore and Family Safe Media in 2005-2006 found:

• The average internet user spends a quarter of an hour a day viewing pornography.
• One in 5 men view pornography online while at work.
• More than a third of downloads are pornographic.
• A quarter of all search engine requests are pornographic.
• More than a third of Internet users report unwanted exposure to sexual material.

Digital technology has created a means for people to satisfy their sexual appetite both online and offline, and to some extent it has had some really negative consequences.

For example, individuals who find sexual partners online are often more likely to contract STDs, and Aboujaoude makes a convincing argument that the internet facilitates sexual encounters to a much greater ease than without the internet, because: 1) It helps us manage first impressions better, and 2) It allows us to begin building a trustful relationship (through “virtual intimacy”) before ever meeting someone in person. In one study published in 2007 by the journal Sexuality Research and Social Policy, 30% of women engaged in sexual activity during their first face-to-face meeting with someone they met online – but most didn’t consider it a “one night stand.”

The internet allows us to facilitate courtship in a far easier and faster way then actually going out on dates in person (where we probably learn far more about each other). Due to this, Aboujaoude believes that the internet might be considered it’s own independent risk factor in the contraction of STDs.

In addition to this, the rise of cellphones and texting (mobile versions of our “digital self”) have also brought about a new phenomenon of sexual activity: sexting. According to a 2008 survey of 1,280 participants, commissioned by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, 22 percent of all teenage girls said they have posted online, e-mailed, or sexted nude or seminude images of themselves. Out of boys, 18 percent reported posting or sending pictures of themselves. Most do it to be “fun or flirtatious” or as a “joke,” but the joke usually ends once these images make it to the public domain, where people begin sharing them with their peers, coworkers, and Facebook friends.

In many ways, the internet has saved individuals from social isolation and helped people find fulfilling relationships in their lives that they probably wouldn’t have found otherwise. But it is important to be aware of these dark aspects of our online lives that can sometimes foster destructive habits and attitudes when going about relationships and sexual behavior. Part of it probably has to do with “Impulsivity,” “Narcissism,” and other traits of our digital self and e-personality. One thing is for certain however: the internet is drastically changing the way many of us conduct our relationships.

Illusion of Knowledge

According to Aboujaoude, the internet has bestowed a “false mastery of knowledge.” While we have so much information right at the tips of our fingers, especially with access to sites like Google and Wikipedia, many of us begin to think we are more qualified and educated than we really are.

In fact, partly because there is just so much information on the internet, many of us can’t be bothered to read lengthy articles or prose. Instead, according to Jacob Nielsen (an early authority on Web page “usability”) 79% of online readers scan, rather than read word-for-word. Often readers can’t be bothered to dig into text in order to find a piece of information or an answer to a problem. Instead, we like our information highlighted or put into a small bullet-point list, something that is easily digestible and doesn’t lose our waning attention.

Nicholas Carr wrote an article a few years ago expressing a big concern for this new way of reading and absorbing new information, called “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” He argues from personal experience that because we have become so hooked on immediate gratification and immediate information from the internet, our attention spans (and our ability to focus) have declined significantly. To date, several studies have shown a link between Attendion Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and internet use.

Internet Addiction

Considering all the conveniences and desires that the internet seems to provide our digital self, it’s probably not too surprising that internet addiction has been on the rise over the years. According to some sources, the Internet can sometimes suck up 45 days per year in some urban centers.

According to a survey done by Aboujaoude and his researchers, 4-14% of the general population show evidences of problematic internet use, such as:

• 6% said their personal relationships suffered as a consequence of internet use.
• 6% regularly went online to escape negative moods.
• 9% felt they had to hide their internet use.
• 11% regularly stayed online for longer than they intended.
• 14% had a hard time staying offline for days in a row.

Although the diagnosis of “Internet Addiction” isn’t yet included in the DSM (Diagnostics and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), Aboujaoude believes that it will soon be, as he finds there is compelling evidence that internet addiction is a solely new kind of obsessive behavior that isn’t yet properly researched or recognized in academic psychology.

The Future of Our Digital Self

Now with the surge of online mobile devices, our digital self is playing a bigger and bigger role in our lives. In all likelihood, the digital self isn’t going away, which is why it is so important to pay attention to the warnings in Virtually You so that we can avoid many of these pitfalls in our future online behavior.

Personally, at times I find some of Aboujaoude’s writing a little alarmist and blown out of proportion, but that doesn’t takeaway from the bigger lessons in Virtually You, which I believe every individual is going to need to come to terms with as our virtual world continues to grow, evolve, and become more integral to our daily lives.

Yet I remain stuck in them.

Even while knowing they are wrong and ineffective, I keep doing them. Repeating them. Again and again. And each time the pain and suffering comes back. And I say to myself, “Okay, that’s the last time. Fuck that. Never again. I’ve learned my lesson now.”

But, for some odd reason, I do it again. And again. I act as if I enjoy the pain, even though I know I really don’t. I act impulsively. Automatically. Like a programmed robot with no sense of choice.

These patterns in my life seem to be really sticky. They are deeply rooted. I’ve thought of countless ways I can try to correct them, but my efforts have so far remained fruitless. It is almost as if there is another part of me that I can’t change. And perhaps there is.

But that’s not going to stop me from trying. Not yet at least. Maybe I need to dig deeper. Maybe I need to ask myself better questions. Maybe I need a new perspective. Maybe I just need to be more patient. Maybe I just need more experience. Maybe I need to “just do it” and habituate myself to failure until it means nothing anymore.

If there is a solution, then I know that it’s going to take some time, effort, and dedication. I’m well aware of the myth of overnight success, and as a 22 year old I don’t expect to have everything work out my way all of a sudden.

Upon reflection, I’ve noticed that there are some things I need to consider about these “old ways” (ways that seem so persistent throughout my life), and how these relate to personal development more broadly.

I can only focus on one major change at a time.

Not only can I not change everything overnight, but I also can’t change multiple things all at the same time. Making a conscious change in your life takes up physical and mental resources. The more resources you allocate to one conscious endeavor, the less you can allocate to another.

Trying to change everything all at once is only going to spread your resources too thin – and then nothing will get accomplished. Therefore, it is important to focus on only major change at a time.

We are multi-faceted beings. Therefore, simple solutions (while desirable) aren’t always the correct ones. Occam’s razor says, “Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.”

It’s good not to over-complicate our problems, but at the same time we can’t ignore the details of our plights if we truly want to get to the root of them. If we think too simply, then we won’t develop the proper focus to overcome our bad habits.

The truth is our life can be broken down into many different components:

• Health
• Relationships
• Career
• Finances
• Education
• Psychology
• Religion/spirituality

Sure, they are all intertwined and interrelated. For example, working on your health may increase your confidence and self-esteem, and that can then spill over into your relationships and career. But it is important that you don’t try to conquer the whole world all at once.

If you are the kind of person who has never went to the gym on a regular basis, then you should really just focus on that for your first 2-5 weeks until it becomes a more common habit. Once that becomes more second-nature and automatic, then you can shift your consciousness to other aspects of your life that you want to adjust. This basic rule applies to any kind of habit change.

The point is that you go step-by-step, building yourself bolt-by-bolt, and not trying to transform yourself in one desperate swoop.

Again, these things take time, effort, and dedication. Personal development is an ongoing process with no clear beginning or end. Often you just have to take life one step at a time, because any other way will just get you flustered and frustrated.

LESSON: Some aspects of my life have been relatively “stagnant,” because I’ve been busy focusing on other aspects of my growth.

This is one reason I am still stuck in some old ways.

However, I can try to better overcome these old ways by focusing on them on a 1 to 1 basis. It’s OK to put some goals on the back-burner while I work on others, because working on them all at once would spread my physical and mental resources too thin.

I’m addicted to certainty and familiarity.

Certainty and familiarity are powerful forces. And even when I’m focused and I have a clear idea on what the right thing to do is, I often still snap back to old habits because they are already built so strongly into my brain’s wiring.

Familiarity gives us a sense of security. I repeat the same old patterns because I know ahead of time what will happen. The same can’t be said for new patterns, where the results I get may be more unpredictable.

The problem is that these old patterns become “just good enough” – and trying something different (even if it may be better) can have short-term costs and growth pains that we aren’t willing to pay for.

But if I want to change something, I have to be willing to pay those short-term costs. That means embracing uncertainty and the occasional pain and failure. I can’t expect to dive into something new and hit a home-run right away. Rarely do things work that way.

Facing uncertainty and fear is required for any kind of personal change. It is precisely when we face these fears that we learn something about ourselves that we hadn’t known before. And it is only after we get that new-found knowledge about ourselves that we are able to make the appropriate changes to our life. We experiment, we push boundaries, and we end up with a more expanded view of ourselves then one we had previously. But to discover these new boundaries we need to be willing to step outside of our “comfort zone” of security and familiarity.

LESSON: Any type of personal change is going to be met with resistance. But instead of allowing this resistance to inhibit my growth, I will embrace fear and uncertainty as a sign that I am expanding and testing my boundaries.

A deep part of me identifies with those old patterns.

Sometimes I look back on these old habits and think this is just who I am. Then I remember that I am always changing whether I take conscious control over this change or not.

When I say “this is just who I am,” I’m really just reinforcing old habits by deciding to identify with them, and therefore I continue doing them. In many ways, I am giving myself permission to repeat the same mistakes.

But, looking more closely, who I was 10 years ago was a remarkably different person than who I am today. And who I am today will be remarkably different than who I will become 10 years into the future. When I learn to embrace this dynamic and changing self I find it easier to drop older habits and adopt newer ones. Change is natural, and self-change becomes a constantly unfolding process.

Some people however choose to cling to these old patterns not just because they fear something different, but because they think these old patterns are their “authentic self.”

I believe that to accept our “authentic selves” is to accept our nature as beings who are in a constant state of flux. The belief in a static self is illusory. But it has consequences. When we cling to these old ways, we suffer. When we can’t let go of our past selves, we never learn or adapt. And when we fight the changes that we really want to make, we unintentionally inhibit ourselves from happiness.

Letting go of past beliefs and habits is tough. There’s no denying that. It requires that we begin to see ourselves in a different light. However, many of us become too stubborn to let go of our old identities. For some odd reason, we want to change the world so that it fits our view, but we don’t want to change ourselves in the process.

It doesn’t work that way.

LESSON:We need to let go of old beliefs and habits that no longer serve our interests. It doesn’t have to mean that we are being inauthentic or changing our “core self,” it means we are taking conscious control over who we really are and how we live our lives.

Questions

1) Have you ever tried to make a change but you were met with unbearable resistance? If so, what do you think was the biggest contributor to this resistance?

Please use the comment section and share your answers and thoughts!

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I partially agree, but I also find his position a bit absolutist:

“When you think you control something, you’re wrong.”

No, at least not always. When I consciously make a decision, I’m taking control over my actions. When I choose to say something nice, hug someone, or do some other act of loving-kindness, I am indeed taking control over my pattern of behavior.

“Consider the fish. A fish swims in a chaotic sea that it cannot possibly control — much as we all do. The fish, unlike us, is under no illusion that it controls the sea, or other fish in the sea. The fish doesn’t even try to control where it ends up — it just swims, either going with the flow or dealing with the flow as it comes. It eats, and hides, and mates, but does not try to control a thing.”

It may be a bit presumptuous for any of us to try and understand the psychology of a fish, but I would argue that a fish is not under the assumption that it has no control over anything.

Have you ever tried to catch a fish with a net before? The fish does not sit idly, drifting with the current, going wherever destiny seems to take it; instead, it reacts to the net by moving away and seeking freedom.

How much of the fish’s actions are conscious or unconscious is beside the point, the fish acts as if it has a mind of it’s own (and I would argue it does!), and this mind determines some of that fish’s destiny.

If a boat comes by and kills the fish, sure, there may have been nothing in that fish’s capacity to change those circumstances. But just because some things are outside of our control doesn’t mean everything is outside of our control. Often there is a middle ground – and there should be a balanced understanding between what is inside our control and what is outside of our control.

The stoics were one of the first schools of philosophy to take this compatibilist approach to the question of free will vs. determinism. One of the core tenets of their philosophy was finding the balance between the consequences of free will (which they defined as “prohairesis”) and the consequences of what they called “cosmic determinism.” They believed both were intertwined into the laws of causality that determine our reality.

In other words, we are neither complete puppets to external circumstances, nor are we the sole determiners of our reality. There is in-fact a gray area between this black-and-white approach.

Buddhism takes a similar compatibilist approach, although it is more practical than theoretical. Buddhists believe that through meditation one can increase attention and gain insight into what thoughts and attitudes influence their behavior. Then, using this knowledge, we can learn how to change our pattern of behavior by living more consciously and adopting new attitudes. This is why mindfulness has shown to be effective for exercising better self-control over impulsive decision-making often found in those with addictions or Borderline Personality Disorder. (See Alan Wallace’s “Achieving Free Will: A Buddhist Perspective” (PDF) for more on this pragmatic approach to free will and determinism.)

The point I think Leo Babauta was trying to make is that many people sometimes overestimate their influence over their world. This can be an unhealthy attitude because it leads us to assign unnecessary blame for things that are outside of our control. A best friend may get into a car accident, an earthquake happens in Japan, or a mother has a miscarriage, and they exclaim “Why me?! What did I do to deserve this?” The truth is sometimes things just happen regardless of what we do. Just like the fish gets hit by a boat and killed, we too experience things that we have no power to predict or control. This is a very important warning to keep in mind, and I’ve expanded on this idea before in posts like not everything is in your control.

At the same time, some people also have the tendency to underestimate their influence over their world. They become something like a lifeless automaton, letting the wind dictate wherever they go, without a care in the world as to where it may lead them. At times, such a “letting go” attitude can be beneficial, but other times it is a denial of our ability to change ourselves for the better. When we see a handicapped person crossing a road, it is not outside of our control to walk over and help them. In such a case, a “whatever be, will be” attitude actually inhibits us from making a positive difference.

We can’t control many things. We certainly can’t control the past, and our influence on the future is also limited. But in the present moment – when we make conscious decisions – we are indeed exercising our control over our lives and the lives of others. I don’t think it is smart to deny this responsibility.

Leo says in his “Illusion of Control” post that his new attitude allows him to stop making goals and plans. I have a hard time believing him. So he doesn’t meet up with friends at a restaurant or bar? What about when he goes to a blogging expo (that doesn’t require planning?!) Is there also no effort or planning involved when he writes a new post or book? Although he uses absolutist words in his article, I find it hard to believe that he can consistently practice this attitude at all times. In fact, the very action of trying to write a post that (presumably) changes people’s minds to believe in the “illusion of control,” ironically assumes some realm of control.