Metadata
- Authors: Richard S. Marken, Timothy A. Carey
- Full Title:: Controlling People
- Category:: đBooks
- Finished date:: 2023-02-02
Highlights
This book, then, is about the fact that we are all controlling people and that it is completely normal to be one. Indeed, it is just human nature. (Location 67)
Losing control happens when we try to control what we shouldnât control, which is usually peopleâs behavior (including our own, since we are people too). (Location 73)
The obvious solution to this paradox would seem to be to stop trying to control people. But we will see that this is not in fact a solution. (Location 77)
Perceptual Control Theory (PCT), is described in his classic text Behavior: The Control of Perception1. (Location 101)
the controlling that people do is often more obvious when it is failing than when it is successful. (Location 318)
using extreme and sometimes violent actions to achieve their goals. (Location 319)
human propensity to see behavior in terms of purpose. (Location 595)
the skill of maintaining the âmotorcycleâ of your control hierarchy is to use consciousness to direct reorganization to the places that need it, and away from the places that donât. (Location 1007)
controlling other people comes as naturally to us as controlling the location of our furniture or our car. In this way, being a person who wants to control other people is neither good nor bad; it is a natural consequence of oneâs nature as a controlling person. (Location 1082)
behavior seems to be controlled by reinforcements alone, even if these reinforcements are delivered blindly by a machine, with no one there to make them contingent on the occurrence of some particular behavior. (Location 1163)
we can reduce the conflicts that are possible whenever we are dealing with other controlling people by simply remembering to respect other people â to realize that they have their own goals about the way things should be â and to lower the gain when we find that we are starting to get push back from the people we are trying to control. (Location 1501)
In some ways, we could be described as living in the âage of the selfâ. The âselfâ has assumed an almost obsessional status in our current society. Well, in Western society anyway. There is no end of books talking about self-esteem, self-empowerment, self-control, the emotional self, the compassionate self, self-deception, self-discipline, self-discovery, self-help, self-treatment, self-worth, self-doubt, self-sufficiency, self-reliance, self-regulation, self-coaching, self-love, self-healing, self-defeat, self-respect, self-confidence, the (Location 1524)
divided self, the authentic self, a separate self, self-promotion, the deluded self, the self absorbed, self-made, self-aware, self-acceptance, self-sabotage, self-destruction, self-hate, the haunted self, self-realization, self-centredness, self-forgiveness, the undefended self, the true self, the higher self, the original self, the spiritual self, self-motivation, the quantum self, self-interest, and on it goes. (Location 1528)
It seems to make sense that whatever empowers something else must itself be a powerful thing since it is hard to imagine a powerless entity empowering something else. So if we assume that the thing doing the empowering is itself empowered then, it must be the case that a part of the person travelling down the self-empowerment path is already empowered. (Location 1535)
Conflict is particularly pernicious because it occupies so much of a personâs attention and energy. People in conflict spend an enormous amount of time worrying or otherwise thinking about different aspects of the conflict. (Location 1654)
While people can devote a great deal of time and effort to coping with various conflicts, we donât consider a life spent forcing oneself to behave in particular ways to be the ideal solution. People who continually need support and encouragement to stay on the âstraight and narrowâ have not resolved their conflicts. (Location 1659)
When a conflict sets in there is simply no logical way to think yourself out of it. There is no rational way that you can have both social approval and doing things your own way at the same time. (Location 1667)
The more specific and particular your goals are in any given situation the greater the likelihood that your freedom will be restricted. If, for example, your plans for the perfect night are to be eating a particular meal at a particular table at a particular restaurant at a particular time with a particular someone, it will be very easy for the perfectness of this plan to go awry. (Location 1962)
This isnât about dropping standards or accepting second best. Itâs about the specificity of our goals. (Location 1970)
This doesnât mean, necessarily, that we should accept intolerable circumstances and unacceptable situations. It certainly doesnât mean that we shouldnât fight for what we believe in. At the pinnacle of our being, however, we will have a much better sense of the battles that are worth fighting for. (Location 1982)
coming to grips with our controlling natures will help us understand that we can never walk a mile, or any distance at all, in another personâs shoes. We can never experience what it is to be another person. (Location 2101)
Recognizing that we will never know the experiences of others turns out to be a very useful perspective to adopt. It means that we can stop assuming we know why people do certain things and we can develop an ongoing curiosity about the things that people control. (Location 2104)