The psychologist Edward Deci has effectively said the same thing, when it comes to the negative impacts of “controlled motivation” on our psychological well-being.

Being obligated or controlled in a work setting, he says, has been shown to be a “precursor to psychopathology” and addiction.

So what’s the answer when we feel beaten down and we lack this sense of control over our lives?

Not surprisingly, it is to take back control.

Big Leaps Vs Small Steps

The example Hari cites in the Big Think video might seem to be a bit too much of a jump for some, but is instructive all the same.

In the case he highlights, a husband and wife took back control by quitting their jobs to run a bike shop together. The act of being responsible for it had the inadvertent effect of combating their feelings of depression and anxiety.

This is great, but…

While we might aspire to run our own business, we can’t always change our external environment at the click of our fingers.

The key, then, is to understand how we get that feeling of being in control in our everyday life.

A 1970’s psychology study in a U.S. care home might give us some clues about how to achieve that.

Arden House

In the late 1970’s, Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer and her colleague Judith Rodin, conducted what was to become a landmark experiment in Arden House, a care home in New England.

Offices are obviously not the only places where we can feel helpless and hopeless — care homes, for many, are quite literally the final nail in the coffin.

What they did at Arden House, however, to see if they could combat this, was deceptively simple but startlingly effective.

Langer and Rodin divided the residents into two groups, both of which were given plants to care for and films to watch, with a subtle variation in the parameters set around the control group.

While one group had everything done for them, the other was given the power to make decisions for themselves.

Nothing grand, they were simply given the ability to decide where and when they would receive visitors, if and when they would watch the films being shown and in what way they would care for their houseplants (how often they would water them, where they would place them in their rooms and so on).

The idea being, writes Langer in her book Counterclockwise, was to make this group feel actively engaged with the world around them — and less of a passive bystander.

The results were remarkable.

The Magic Of Watering Plants

Eighteen months later, they revisited Arden House, compared the two groups and found that the control group were not only healthier, happier and more alert but twice as many of them were alive.

It raised the tantalising idea that not only is the feeling of control directly linked to happiness — it might be linked to longevity, too.

(In fact a later study found that having a sense of control over one’s life reduced the risk of death by 13%).

What is so reassuring about Langer’s study is that sometimes the desire to be in control of our lives can take on what feel like unreachable goals — we want to own a house, run our own business, be in a position of status.

And, of course, these things might come.

But for the time in-between, it is prudent for us to stay aware of the fact that the things that markedly improve our happiness levels right now are the little decisions we are able to make every day.

What You Can Do Now

Even if it is just choosing what we focus on, there are always some aspects of our lives (if not all) that we are in control of.

Here are a few ways to feel more in control:

• Small Actions: Start small and apply The “Do Something Principle”, coined by Mark Manson. Take action on something — literally anything . It will change your state of mind. The motivation levels you might begin to feel will then have a ripple effect — and you might actually begin to realise that you can make other changes in your life as well.

• Pet Projects: If you feel inclined, think about starting a project that is yours and yours alone (it could be growing vegetables or starting a blog). No-one is asking you to do it, you’re not getting paid for it and you won’t be reprimanded if you don’t do it. This is something that belongs to you, that you can take ownership of and that you can always come back to, regardless of what else is going on in your life. It is your safe haven.

• Find meaning: If you can, find something in your life that gives you meaning. This can be volunteering, adopting a pet, doing someone a favour, it doesn’t matter. But feeling like we matter, does. It literally gives us a reason-to-be.

• TV Exposure: Control what you watch on the TV, particularly the news when it’s always bad news. Our negativity bias draws us towards catastrophes and disasters which can leave us feeling demoralised and demotivated. It’s a perfect recipe for feeling hopeless. Restrict your exposure to that.

• Boundaries: Practice the art of saying no to things. Free up time to do what you actually want to do (rather than going to that bar you know you will hate). Prioritising our own needs – and our free time – is agency walking.

• Tap: You won’t be able to maintain a feeling of control if you aren’t fully engaged with how you feel. Learn a D.I.Y. technique like tapping (EFT) which literally puts your well-being at your fingertips.