Hauptman’s exploration into the mechanics of control began, in part, with a striking personal encounter that highlighted the contrast between ideal order and human reality. He recalls meeting a young speed-cuber—an approachable, friendly individual capable of solving a Rubik’s Cube in under sixty seconds. Yet, despite the young man’s pleasant demeanor, Hauptman found himself experiencing an immediate sense of resentment. The irritation was not directed at the individual himself, but rather at what he represented on a metaphorical level. To Hauptman, the speed-cuber’s effortless mastery over a complex puzzle stood in stark contrast to the chaotic, unmanageable reality of daily life, which so often feels like a Rubik’s Cube that resists all attempts at resolution.
The fundamental frustration of the Rubik’s Cube metaphor lies in its structural mechanics: attempting to make one face a single, uniform color inevitably scrambles the alignment of the remaining sides. Hauptman notes that daily human existence operates under a remarkably similar principle. Individuals continually attempt to establish order across multiple competing domains, only to discover that progress in one area frequently precipitates disarray in another. A person may focus intensely on seeing clients or attending to household responsibilities, dedicatedly spend time with family members or devote hours to writing a book, or actively socialize with friends while attempting to monitor their physical health and weight. Similarly, staying current with professional literature often comes at the direct expense of reading mysteries simply to relax.
According to Hauptman, the fundamental reality underlying these daily dilemmas is that no individual can accomplish everything simultaneously. Life requires constant, ongoing trade-offs throughout each day. This phenomenon extends far beyond personal schedules, reflecting how change functions within the broader world. The more aggressively people attempt to force reality to conform to their specific expectations, the more forcefully reality tends to push back. This underlying truth has long been reflected in classic cautionary narratives throughout history and culture, ranging from the ancient myths of King Midas and Ebenezer Scrooge to modern stories such as Jurassic Park. For those who struggle with a psychological dependence on control, these dynamics serve as a constant source of internal friction.
In his clinical work and writing, Hauptman defines control not merely as bossy, domineering, or authoritarian behavior, but as a universal human impulse. He frames control as a deep, ingrained desire to make reality cooperate—a persistent effort to compel people, circumstances, and life outcomes to align with personal needs, wants, and expectations. Over years of examining this human impulse, Hauptman identified three central paradoxes that govern attempts at control, each revealing how efforts to master life often backfire.
The first paradox of control is that the greater a person’s psychological need for control becomes, the less in control that person ultimately feels. When the demand for absolute order increases, any minor deviation or unexpected event is experienced as a major crisis, diminishing the individual’s sense of stability. The second paradox concerns interpersonal dynamics: the harder an individual tries to control another person, the more that effort compels the other party to assert control in return, creating a cycle of mutual resistance and conflict.
It is the third paradox, however, that directly explains the symbolic frustration of the Rubik’s Cube: to gain control in one specific area of life, a person must inevitably relinquish it in another. Hauptman notes that this principle operates consistently across human experience, even when individuals desperately try to ignore it. The relentless attempt to achieve total command over one domain frequently triggers an acute loss of control in another critical area of existence.
Hauptman points to numerous clinical and real-world examples that illustrate this third paradox in action. Consider an individual struggling with alcohol dependency who initially turns to drinking as a mechanism to manage overwhelmed emotions, only to ultimately lose control to the substance itself. In the corporate sphere, a business executive may achieve remarkable status, financial success, and professional control, only to become completely estranged from his wife, children, and extended family.
Similar patterns emerge in domestic and personal spheres. A mother may dedicate her entire focus and identity to the upbringing of her children, only to wake up years later discovering she has become so emotionally disconnected from her husband that they essentially stop speaking. In another case, a man suffering from depression may spend years successfully concealing his true emotional state from everyone around him, maintaining an outward appearance of stability until he finds himself utterly exhausted and incapable of getting out of bed one morning.
Despite witnessing the destructive nature of this third paradox repeatedly, Hauptman admits that internalizing its lesson remains an ongoing challenge. The human psyche continually desires contradictory outcomes: writing a book while simultaneously spending unrestricted time with family, earning substantial income while taking ample time to rest and play, or enjoying indulgent foods like bagels and pizza while expecting the number on the bathroom scale to drop.
However, a critical shift in perspective occurs when individuals stop treating the "scrambled" sides of their lives as evidence of personal inadequacy or failure. For much of his own life, Hauptman viewed incomplete tasks and competing demands as signs of personal failure. A messy house meant he should have cleaned it; time spent away from writing felt like wasted hours, yet time spent writing felt like the neglect of other responsibilities. Choosing to eat pizza induced guilt, while skipping it created a sense of missing out on something desired. Every unmanaged aspect of life stood as an implicit accusation.
Over time, Hauptman began to reframe these unfinished or unaligned areas not as failures, but as neutral reminders of intentional choices. Recognizing that every affirmative choice contains an inherent negative choice—that a productive writing day naturally leaves household chores undone, and a day devoted to chores leaves a manuscript untouched—helps clarify that every decision carries an unavoidable cost. While this realization may seem obvious in theory, it remains difficult to practice because part of the human mind inherently demands choices without consequences, seeking to possess the cake and consume it simultaneously.
This stubborn, demanding aspect of human nature—whether characterized as childish, persistent, or addicted to control—struggles to accept that life cannot be solved like a mechanical puzzle. Yet, learning to acknowledge this reality can lead to profound personal growth. Hauptman illustrates this shift through a personal medical incident that occurred during a routine physical examination.
During the checkup, Hauptman’s physician conducted a standard electrocardiogram and discovered an abnormality suggesting a potential transient ischemic attack (TIA). Although Hauptman felt completely fine, his physician instructed him to proceed immediately to the hospital emergency room. Upon arriving at the hospital, medical staff placed him on a gurney in a busy hallway, where he remained for four hours while doctors performed necessary diagnostic tests.
The sudden hospitalization disrupted his entire schedule. Hauptman was forced to cancel six client sessions, attempt to reassure his anxious wife over the phone, face uncertain medical expenses, and endure hours of waiting in a corridor with no immediate answers. In earlier years, such an invasive disruption to his plans would have triggered intense frustration, anxiety, and anger at the loss of control over his day.
Instead, Hauptman experienced a surprisingly different reaction: he lay back on the gurney and took a restful, one-hour nap. This unexpected response served as tangible evidence of a deeper psychological transition—a willingness to accept trade-offs without resentment or protest, and a realization that being unable to solve every problem does not mean one is failing at life.
As a practicing psychotherapist and author, Hauptman continues to write about the challenges of control, emotional safety, and personal relationships. Through his work, he explores what becomes possible when individuals cease trying to force reality to cooperate with their demands. Ultimately, as Hauptman’s experience demonstrates, moving past the addiction to control requires accepting a fundamental truth: while no one can manage everything at once, learning to make peace with life’s scrambled sides is often where true serenity begins.
