How to Control Your Life

(Page Updated 5/27/25)

Certain phrases lose force through overuse, yet none deserves revival more than, know thyself. In Optima Bowling's lexicon, the maxim means far more than personality quizzes or casual introspection. To know oneself is to discern, moment by moment, (1) which perceptions are being compared with which internal standards, (2) how large the gap between them is, and (3) by what actions the gap can be closed. That three-step choreography defines a control loop.

When understood through the Psychology of Lifespan Performance and Perceptual Control (LPPC) model, it becomes the central mechanism of human experience, the pivot on which potentiality turns into actuality. This page presents a practical explanation of that mechanism, inviting readers to bring scattered impulses into coherent alignment and, in doing so, contribute to the broader order of their communities.

Psychology of Lifespan Performance and Perceptual Control

The LPPC model organizes perception into twelve ascending levels, ranging from raw sensations of intensity at the base to comprehensive system concepts at the summit. Each level hosts countless private feedback loops. A bowler adjusting finger pressure on the ball controls a configuration; a student organizing study blocks manages programs and categories; a reformer drafting a climate charter works at the plane of principles and system concepts. Although these levels feel discrete, their operations are continuous. A shift in heart rate can cascade into emotion, cognition, and moral resolve within seconds. Control, therefore, is not the blunt assertion of will over circumstance but the orchestrated calibration of nested loops across the vertical stack of being.

Optima Bowling refers to that vertical stack as the Systemic Levels of Being Human: visible-physical, physical-etheric, emotional-repulsive-attractive, and mental-causal. The visible-physical tier encompasses biochemistry, posture, and environment. The physical-etheric tier regulates energy. The emotional-repulsive-attractive tier registers aversion and attraction, coloring perception with urgency. The mental-causal tier encompasses thinking, the measure of intelligence, and resides in the world of ideas, characterized by first principles, ultimate concerns, and a sense of destiny. Because each tier re‑interprets signals originating in the one below, fragmentation at any point ripples upward and outward, distorting higher judgments. To control life well, one must guide coherence at every level, not by suppressing lower signals but by harmonizing them within a unifying reference.

Purpose‑Integrity‑Experience (PIE)

Purpose‑Integrity‑Experience (PIE) supplies that unifying frame. Purpose asks why a particular state of affairs deserves pursuit. Integrity insists that every tier of being (visible-physical, physical-etheric, emotional-repulsive-attractive, and mental-causal) agrees upon the target. Experience tests the hypothesis in the friction of real events. The triad is less a motivational slogan than a structural necessity. A goal without purpose starves for energy; integrity without experience drifts into abstraction; experience without purpose and integrity reduces to aimless motion. In practice, a purposeful reference launches inquiry, integrity surveys systemic readiness, and experience announces what reality will tolerate.

Consider a common ambition: "I want more morning energy." At first glance, the phrase hovers emotionally, voicing a desire to replace weariness with vitality. Framed as a control loop, however, the statement becomes, "I intend to perceive myself rising at six o'clock feeling rested and alert." The new phrasing creates a reference perception (wake time plus felt alertness) that can be compared against lived data. In the LLPC map, this target straddles configuration (body sensations) and sequence (morning routine). The purpose might read, "So I can pursue passion projects before the start of my workday." Integrity check: will earlier waking undermine family harmony or immune resilience? The experience begins tomorrow at dawn.

Once a loop is named, measurement follows. Measurement is often brushed aside as cold and mechanical, yet at its heart lies curiosity. Which variables influence alertness: bedtime, screen exposure, caffeine, unresolved anxieties? Selecting one variable to tweak is the essence of micro‑research, the smallest replicable slice of the wider scientific endeavor described on the companion page, Humanity and Applied Research. A week of data, including bedtime and wake quality, rated on the Craziness Scale, yields initial insight. That scale ranges from fragmented frenzy to integrated wholeness. Potentiality begins to actualize if moving bedtime earlier nudges the needle toward calm clarity.

Fragmentation seldom yields so readily. Perhaps bedtime shifts earlier, but scrolling persists, delaying melatonin release, or resentful thoughts surface, sabotaging sleep despite the ideal routine. Such resistance reveals competing loops (i.e., pockets of purpose set against the declared reference). One loop chases stimulation, and another pursues repose. The task is not to crush the rebel loop but to integrate it. Why the craving for late‑night novelty? Boredom, loneliness, avoidance of tomorrow's demands? Answers relocate the conflict from configuration to relationship or even principle, where broader references can mediate. A principle might assert, "Vitality is worth more than keeping up with social feeds," guiding the lower loop into a new alignment.

The Craziness Scale Earns Its Keep

The Craziness Scale earns its keep here. It offers a quick certainty: rising fragmentation signals loop competition; rising wholeness signals synergy. One need not assign numbers with scientific precision; noticing trends suffices. Persisting dissonance invites structural remedies. On the visible-physical tier, blackout curtains; on the emotional-repulsive-attractive tier, an evening gratitude log; on the mental-causal tier, a narrative that re‑labels bedtime as the first courageous act of tomorrow's mission. As each intervention closes perceptual error, the sense of agency expands. The individual has not dominated life by relying on the physical level force of the will to power but rather harmonized it through awareness and iterative adjustment.

Now zoom from the bedroom to the bowling lane. A novice player often thrashes between contradictory pointers: keep the arm loose, maintain spine tilt, and accelerate through release. Each instruction is a loop awaiting stabilization. When attempted simultaneously, they jam the motor cortex. Control improves only when cues are sequenced: first regulate grip pressure (configuration), then practice a rhythmic four‑step approach (sequence), and finally merge the two until the relationship between stance and rotation is felt. The same PIE logic applies. Purpose: a smooth, repeatable delivery. Integrity: Ensure that adjustments align with body mechanics and emotional confidence. Experience: record shot dispersion after each drill, potential blossoms into actuality, as hits clustered around the pocket result in a higher percentage of strikes.

The principle generalizes that complexity yields incremental integration. A single, healthy loop frees attentional bandwidth for more serious concerns, just as an automated habit liberates executive function for creative thought. Over months, stable routines accumulate into a personal operating system in the form of a network of evolving negative feedback loop systems that are difficult to derail. The LPPC model calls these meshed loop programs. From the outside, they appear as consistent personality traits; from the inside, they feel like effortless flow. At that stage, private mastery radiates outward. Others observe the behavioral regularity, adopt its features, and collectively formalize them into shared norms. Thus, private control loops crystallize into public order.

See More: The Craziness Scale and Personality Development

Crystallizations of Cultural History 

Cultural history abounds with such crystallizations. The practice of washing hands before surgery originated from the obsessive habits of one Viennese obstetrician. The germ theory elevated the loop from a configuration to a principle; institutional protocols embedded it at the program level of global healthcare. Mindfulness apps carry ancient contemplative routines into millions of bedrooms in a quieter register, shifting bedtime awareness from social feeds to belly breaths. Each adoption crosses the threshold where potential societal benefits become actual public practices. Feedback, however, never halts. New norms spawn fresh errors, antibiotic resistance, and meditation as performative wellness, demanding further loops of inquiry.

Potentiality and Actuality

Potentiality and actuality meet precisely at those junctures where lofty references encounter gritty methods. Every human holds unrealized possibilities— sensible abilities and essential qualities —latent within their neurobiology, and subconscious and control loops are the connections. Declining a reference and refining behavior to match the possibility becomes real. The expedition is rarely smooth. Error signals are inherently uncomfortable; they announce the distance between the current state and aspiration. The beauty of the LPPC perspective is that discomfort becomes transdiagnostic data for the method of levels therapy, pinpointing which loop requires adjustment rather than condemning the person as flawed.

In this context, wholeness is not a static materialization but a dynamic equilibrium among nested loops, each pursuing its reference without sabotaging its neighbors. Fragmentation emerges when intended references conflict: an emotional craving cancels physical recovery; the mental-causal ideology and common sense control emotional repulsion and attraction. The craft of self-control is developmental; therefore, it starts as the art of integrating fragmentation and wholeness. It then develops into a self-conscious ideology of common sense. One practical tactic is the reference hierarchy audit. Draw a simple ladder: at the bottom, list recurring bodily needs, then emotional moods, then intellectual projects, and finally, the overarching ideology of evolution. Evaluate a stubborn problem, let's say, procrastination at each rung. Which reference trumps others? Which remains unvoiced? The audit often reveals a missing integrity check or an outdated principle that clashes with a new experience.

Individual Practice is Social

While the page centers on the individual practice of controlling one's life, its subtext is unavoidably social. Household rhythms, workplace policies, and municipal infrastructures (all are nested layers of collective loops). When an employee adopts the Pomodoro Technique as a routine, teammates adjust their messaging cadence; soon, a departmental norm emerges, and eventually, a company handbook codifies focus blocks. The transition from private to public is not always benign. The mass adoption of four-hour smartphone diets could transform urban revenue streams that rely on attention economies. Thus, controlling one's life is never purely personal; it is participatory stewardship of shared reality.

At this intersection, ethical stakes surface. Has control been gained or ceded if a marketer learns to trigger impulsive loops for profit? The LPPC model clarifies that the consumer's reference was hijacked, the perceived error was artificially increased, and action closed the gap in a direction chosen by another. Social architecture teeters on such asymmetries. The antidote is meta-control: the deliberate cultivation of awareness about how loops are influenced, a form of civic literacy in perceptual dynamics. Literacy begins with pages like this before scaling into educational curricula, public-interest technology design, and transparent governance.

The Practicality of Control

Finally, returning to the personal sphere, the question becomes practical: how does one embark? The simplest doorway is the one‑week experiment. Choose a narrow loop; articulate a purpose sentence; note integrity constraints; specify an experience metric. Perhaps: "I will practice diaphragmatic breathing for five minutes after waking to reduce midday anxiety, provided the routine does not shorten cherished reading time." Track perception with a ten‑point calmness rating. At week's end, inspect the Craziness Scale trend. Improvement signals potential progression into actuality; regression exposes hidden fragmentation. Either outcome instructs the next iteration. Over successive experiments, a portfolio of refined loops accrues, each stabilizing life and elevating agency.

The accumulation of such portfolios across citizens is how civilizations evolve. Slow traffic deaths, broaden literacy, and improve public discourse; each begins as countless humble loops aligned with broader references. The LPPC framework explains why top-down decrees often fail when they do not align with existing lower-level control structures and why grassroots shifts can ultimately reshape civil law. Optima Bowling's commitment is to equip individuals with the map and method so that their private adjustments propagate upward with wisdom rather than accident.

To control one's life under the Optima Bowling banner requires a lifelong apprenticeship in perceptual mechanics. It is to accept that sensations, emotions, thoughts, and ideas are not chaotic eruptions but signals coursing through adjustable circuits. It is to respect the discomfort of error as the price of clarity and to celebrate the moment when a newly integrated loop hums so quietly it is taken for granted. The work is unending, yet each cycle makes the next easier, moving the experience along the Craziness Scale toward supple harmony. And because harmonized lives radiate outward, the work also weaves new strands into the social fabric, tiny yet durable filaments of order that tether potential futures to present realities.

None of this guarantees perpetual serenity. Storms of illness, upheaval, or grief can devastate even a highly developed control architecture. Yet the practitioner versed in LPPC, guided by PIE, alert to systemic levels, and fluent in the grammar of potentiality and actuality meets turbulence in a different way. Rather than thrash unthinkingly, they scan the hierarchy, locate the corrupted reference, reset it, and begin anew. In that resilient gesture, the promise of human self‑direction shines brightest: the power to fall, learn, recalibrate, and rise, each time weaving personal renewal into the broader, ever‑evolving tapestry of shared life.

See More: Livelihood Development and Lifespan Performance

See More: Transition From Ignoring to Working Upon

See More: Researching Perceptual Control Theory

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