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Having a choice in life is a good thing.

We feel actually safer if we have a sense of control. Most of us feel safer if we can are the ones driving the car rather than sitting in the

passenger seat. Many people feel much safer of course being able to determine not only when to eat, what we eat, what we wear,

and at work, being able to have a sense of autonomy and agency in determining how we go about our tasks or set about meeting our responsibilities.

Clinical studies by Jonathan Haight and others,

or at least referred to in the work by Haight.

There is many baseline happiness studies where they would go through buildings in downtown New York and interview everybody that was present and they found that the people who were the happiest in their

workplace or in in their livelihoods were the ones who have the greatest amount

of control over when they can do tasks and how they would go about them.

Interestingly enough, what this meant is that very often plumbers and janitors were at the very highest of people that

were happy along with people who actually ran small businesses or businesses because they could determine how to go about their

tasks when they would work, when they would take a break, and so forth.

And depending upon how little control people had in approaching their tasks, their happiness,

their sense of well-being would diminish while their saline cortisol levels would go up.

Hortizol is of course the stress hormone in the body.

This is why, believing that we have a sense of control or power to choose, make decisions in our life makes life more bearable.

It makes us feel less vulnerable and many clinical psychologists have noted,

including all the way back to the Buddha,

that people like to establish routines and rituals

...