Buddhist teacher and author Sylvia Boorstein once framed psychological maturity through a succinct benchmark, noting that a meaningful sign of enlightenment is the capacity to say, and genuinely mean, that while a situation may not be what one wanted, it is what exists, and is therefore acceptable. This concept of radical acceptance stands in direct contrast to a widespread human drive: the desire to exert complete control over reality.
Steve Hauptman, a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, psychotherapist, and author of Monkeytraps: Why We Try to Control Everything and How We Can Stop, has spent years examining this drive. Through his clinical practice and personal reflection, Hauptman explores how the persistent attempt to make reality conform to personal expectations often backfires, creating emotional distress rather than security.
The struggle to achieve total life balance is frequently illustrated through a vivid metaphor: the Rubik’s Cube. Hauptman recalls meeting a speed-cuber—a young man capable of solving the complex 3D puzzle in under sixty seconds. While the individual was polite and friendly, Hauptman felt a deep metaphorical resentment toward his skill. To someone struggling to keep various aspects of daily existence in order, life itself can feel like an insoluble puzzle. The harder an individual works to make one face of the cube a uniform color, the more scrambled and multicolored the remaining sides become.
In daily practice, this reality manifests as a series of endless trade-offs. An individual may choose to see clients or attend to domestic chores around the house. They might dedicate time to their family or focus on writing a book. They may go to dinner with friends or strictly monitor their calorie intake to manage their weight. They can stay current with demanding professional literature or read fiction to relax. The fundamental limitation, Hauptman points out, is that no one can do everything at once. Every waking hour involves trading one priority for another.
This principle extends beyond individual schedules into the broader world. When people attempt to force life to meet rigid expectations, external reality often resists. Historical and cultural narratives have long highlighted this phenomenon through cautionary tales. Classical myths like that of King Midas, literary classics such as Charles Dickens’s story of Ebenezer Scrooge, and modern pop-culture narratives like Jurassic Park all center on the same core premise: attempting to dominate complex systems or force outcomes inevitably generates unintended, counterproductive consequences.
In his clinical work, Hauptman identifies this underlying drive as an addiction to control. Within this therapeutic framework, control does not necessarily refer to being domineering, bossy, or overtly aggressive toward others. Instead, it describes a deeply ingrained human desire to force reality to cooperate—an impulse to make people, situations, and outcomes conform to personal needs, desires, and expectations.
Through his analysis of control-seeking behaviors, Hauptman has outlined three central paradoxes that govern human attempts to dictate reality:
The first paradox dictates that the more control a person feels they need in order to feel secure, the less in control they ultimately feel. By elevating the requirement for certainty, any slight deviation from expected outcomes creates heightened distress.
The second paradox reveals that the harder an individual tries to control those around them, the more those people are forced to exert control in return, leading to reciprocal resistance and interpersonal conflict.
The third paradox highlights the inevitability of opportunity costs: to gain control over one specific domain of life, an individual must surrender control in another.
Despite observing this third paradox repeatedly in clinical practice and daily life, individuals consistently struggle to internalize its lesson. Hauptman notes numerous real-world examples where an intense effort to secure control over one area triggered a dramatic loss of control elsewhere:
An individual struggling with emotional distress might turn to alcohol as a mechanism to manage uncomfortable feelings, only to ultimately lose control to alcohol dependency.
A corporate executive might achieve immense professional success, status, and financial security, yet in the process become entirely estranged from his spouse, children, and extended family.
A dedicated mother might make her children the exclusive center of her existence, only to find herself so emotionally disconnected from her husband that communication between them virtually ceases.
A person suffering from depression might spend years successfully masking their internal emotional state from colleagues and friends, only to wake up one morning completely exhausted and physically unable to get out of bed.
For many people, the inability to keep every side of life’s proverbial cube organized is viewed as a personal failure. Incompleteness is internalized as a moral or functional shortcoming. A messy house suggests neglect; taking time off from work suggests unproductivity; choosing to write means abandoning chores; choosing to clean means abandoning creative work; indulging in favorite foods triggers guilt, while abstaining creates a sense of deprivation. In each scenario, an unselected alternative stands as an implicit accusation of failure.
A shift in perspective occurs when the scrambled side of the cube is no longer interpreted as evidence of personal inadequacy, but rather as evidence of a conscious choice. Hauptman emphasizes that inside every "yes" lies an unavoidable "no." A productive writing session naturally means domestic chores remain undone for the day. A dedicated day of completing household errands means a book manuscript remains untouched.
Every choice carries a cost. While this truth appears self-evident when stated clearly, human psychology frequently resists it. A persistent part of the human psyche simply wants what it wants without compromise. This aspect of the self expects demands to be met, feels anger or hurt when reality fails to comply, and seeks choices devoid of cost—the emotional equivalent of having one’s cake and eating it too. Hauptman characterizes this impulse as stubborn, childish, and rooted in the dynamics of control addiction.
Accepting that life is not a Rubik’s Cube to be neatly solved requires ongoing effort, even for experienced clinicians. However, learning to accept trade-offs without internal protest remains a key indicator of psychological resilience.
This principle was tested in Hauptman’s own life during a routine medical examination. During the visit, his physician conducted an electrocardiogram and detected an anomaly suggesting a potential transient ischemic attack (TIA). Although Hauptman felt physically fine, the doctor instructed him to report immediately to the hospital emergency department.
The medical directive forced an immediate halt to his planned schedule. At the hospital, Hauptman was placed on a gurney in a busy hallway, where he remained for four hours while medical staff conducted further tests. The unexpected emergency required him to cancel six scheduled client therapy sessions, comfort his worried wife over the phone, and face uncertainty regarding the ultimate financial cost of the hospital visit.
In earlier years, such an overwhelming disruption to his plans and expectations would have provoked intense frustration, anxiety, and anger. Instead, confronted with a situation entirely outside his control, Hauptman responded by taking a one-hour nap on the hallway gurney.
The experience served as an empirical demonstration of internal growth. It illustrated that the compulsion to control reality had yielded to a willingness to accept life’s interruptions and trade-offs without emotional protest. Recognizing that one cannot do everything, and that life does not offer choices without costs, allows individuals to stop viewing temporary disorder as a personal failing.
Steve Hauptman, LCSW, continues to write and counsel clients on the psychological dynamics of control, emotional safety, and healthy relationships. Through his published work, including Monkeytraps, he explores what becomes possible when individuals cease demanding that reality cooperate with their expectations and instead learn to navigate life’s inherent trade-offs with flexibility and self-compassion.
