Hello and welcome to the Mindful Kind podcast. I'm your host, Rachel Cable, author of the

Mindfulkind book, Mindfulness Teacher and blogger at Rachelcable.com. Each week this podcast will bring

meaningful tips, tools and strategies so you can manage stress and live more mindfully in the modern world.

Hello and welcome to episode 278 of the Mindful Kind podcast. I'm really, really excited about this

episode because I'll be talking all about the illusion of control. I think it's so important to understand

the illusion of control and how it can interfere with your life because I know from personal

experience how much frustration it can cause. So in the previous episode of the Mindful Kind podcast

called What to Do When Life Feels Out of Control.

I talked about some strategies to help you feel empowered and gain that important sense of

control, but I also offered a word of caution about the illusion of control.

So basically, the illusion of control is the tendency for people to believe that they

can control things they don't actually have complete control over. In the 1970s, a researcher

named Ellen Langer formally identified the illusion of control in her paper published in the

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Now, since then, more research has supported the concept of the illusion of control.

For example, a study found that participants in a lottery experiment believed they had more

control over the outcome if they chose their numbers rather than having them randomly assigned.

Another study even found that participants rolled dice harder to try and get a higher score,

even though the force you used to throw dice doesn't actually change the outcome.

And this is something I reckon is really important to talk about because the illusion of control has caused a lot of frustration

and shame in my own life and I suspect it might be doing the same for others. If you've

been listening to this podcast for a while, you'll probably already know I've experienced stress

...