How to Control Your Life

(Page Updated 5/8/25)

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 offers a practical exposition of that mechanism, inviting readers to bring scattered impulses into coherent alignment and, in doing so, to contribute to the broader order of their communities.

Psychology of Lifespan Performance and Perceptual Control

The LPPC model arranges perception in twelve ascending levels, from raw sensations of intensity at the base to sweeping 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 sequences; 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: physical, emotional, mental, and causal or spiritual. The physical tier encompasses biochemistry, posture, and environment. The emotional tier registers attraction or aversion, coloring perception with urgency. The mental tier weaves symbols and narratives. The causal tier contemplates 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 (physical, emotional, mental, and 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 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 caricatured 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 the Purpose of Research. A week of data, 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 adjudicate. A principle might assert, "Vitality is worth more than keeping up with social feeds," guiding the lower loop into a new alignment.

Here, 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 physical tier, blackout curtains; on the emotional tier, an evening gratitude log; on the mental 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 through force but harmonized life 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: confirm that adjustments suit 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 higher concerns, just as an automated habit liberates executive function for creative thought. Over months, stable routines accumulate into a personal operating system (a web of reticular loops 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 began as the obsessive loop of one Viennese obstetrician. Germ theory elevated the loop from configuration to 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 benefit becomes actual public practice. Feedback, however, never halts. New norms spawn fresh errors, antibiotic resistance, and meditation as performative wellness, demanding further loops of inquiry.

The Causal Being

Readers may wonder where the causal or spiritual tier fits this relentlessly empirical picture. In perceptual‑control language, the causal tier holds the loftiest reference signals: ideals of justice, beauty, unity, and purpose beyond ego. These references steer principles, which steer programs, which govern daily performance. Neglect the causal tier and lower loops drift without a compass, skilled yet aimless. Over‑emphasize it, and tangible action stalls under the weight of abstraction. Balance arrives when ideology guides criteria for lower‑level success without dictating methods prematurely. A social entrepreneur might keep "dignity for every worker" as a causal reference while testing various salary structures at the principle and program levels.

Potentiality and Actuality

Potentiality and actuality meet precisely at those junctures where lofty references encounter gritty methods. Every human holds unrealized possibilities (skills, relationships, insights) latent within neurobiology and circumstance, and control loops are the bridge. 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 LPPC perspective's beauty 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 arrival but a dynamic equilibrium among nested loops, each pursuing its reference without sabotaging its neighbors. Fragmentation emerges when references conflict—when emotional craving cancels physical recovery or mental ideology silences causal common sense. The craft of self‑control is, therefore, the art of integrating fragmentation and wholeness. 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 values. Evaluate a stubborn problem, let’s say, procrastination at each rung. Which reference trumps others? Which remains unvoiced? The audit often exposes a missing integrity check or an outdated principle clashing with a new experience.

Individual Practice is Social

While the page centers on individual practice, its subtext is unavoidably social. Household rhythms, workplace policies, and municipal infrastructures (all are nested layers of collective loops). When an employee institutes a Pomodoro routine, teammates adapt their messaging cadence; soon, a department norm emerges; eventually, a company handbook codifies focus blocks. The transition from private to public is not always benign. Mass adoption of four‑hour smartphone diets could transform urban revenue streams reliant 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 civic literacy in perceptual dynamics. That 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 burgeoning 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 flounder when they fail to mesh with existing lower‑level control structures and why grassroots shifts can eventually 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.

Rapping Up Our Discussion

In sum, 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 ideals 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 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 differently. 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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