5 Ways Trying To Control Aliveness Actually Destroys It

A month of noticing how control smothers aliveness, and what happens in the space between almost and yes

Sep 30, 2025

Most of us say no before we even consider yes.

Efficiency culture has trained us so well that spontaneity feels reckless, generosity feels suspicious, and connection feels like a luxury we can’t afford.

Someone asks for help and the excuse is forming. An impulse suggests something unplanned and we’re calculating why it won’t work. We’ve become experts at killing possibilities before they can surprise us.

I spent this month noticing how often I almost said no. Almost walked past. Almost chose the safe, efficient, socially acceptable response.

The space between “almost” and what you actually choose is where everything interesting happens.

That pause when I didn’t walk past someone asking for food led to lunch together. Which led to a conversation about bacon preferences. Which somehow resulted in a ladybug settling on my shoulder when I walked back outside, as if the world were saying yes to small interruptions of our automatic responses.

Here’s what most advice about living fully gets wrong: you can’t optimize your way into aliveness. The moments that actually matter emerge precisely when you stop trying to manage them.

This is what I discovered about why trying to control aliveness destroys it.

1. Interruptions Can’t Be Systematized

We’ve turned being alive into another productivity hack. Five AM meditation alarms. Gratitude apps. Apps that remind you to breathe like you’re a houseplant. I would probably track my blinks per minute if there were an app for it.

Here’s what I learned: trying to optimize aliveness kills it.

That micro-moment when you catch yourself reaching for the comfortable excuse—”Sorry, don’t have cash”—and choose something real instead? You can’t systematize that. You can’t turn it into another thing to track on your phone.

Every day, we make dozens of tiny choices:

Someone asks for help, and something in your chest either opens or closes.
A conversation gets real and you either lean in or start calculating your exit strategy.

These moments happen in your body, not in your planning app.

You’re at Starbucks and notice the barista’s name is written in tiny hearts. Instead of grabbing and rushing out, you say “I love how you wrote your name, Maya.” She lights up.

You both do. 🩵

The moment you try to turn these interruptions into a practice, they stop working. You can’t hack your way into spontaneity.

2. Aliveness Needs Accomplices

Aliveness isn’t individual work. It’s collaborative resistance against our own optimization reflexes.

My most alive evening this month happened because someone was willing to save me from myself. I suggested driving somewhere without a plan—which, for me, was already a minor miracle—and instead of letting me spiral into logistics, they just said “yeah, let’s go.”

If they’d responded with “where exactly?” I would have felt obligated to figure it out. If they’d asked “how long will this take?” I would have started doing math. The possibility would have died before it could breathe, and I would have been the one holding the murder weapon in a Lowe’s parking lot.

Most of us are trained momentum killers. We meet spontaneity with spreadsheets. We respond to “want to try something?” with a full risk assessment presentation.

But choosing unoptimized aliveness requires accomplices. People willing to conspire against the cultural programming that turns every impulse into a project to manage. Including the programming running in your own head.

These accomplices are rare. They’re the ones who respond to “want to do something spontaneous?” with “I’m in” instead of “like what?”

Your friend texts “want to get tacos?” and instead of asking which place, what time, should we split an Uber, you just say “yes, picking you up in ten.” Someone suggests taking the scenic route, and you don’t immediately calculate how many extra minutes it will add. A colleague mentions a random pop-up market, and you show up without researching the vendors first.

You can’t rebel against optimization culture alone. Especially when half the time, you’ve decided to play axe-murderer.

3. Impulses Lose Intelligence When Optimized

I once tried to schedule “spontaneous” walks in my calendar.

Tuesday 3 PM: Be spontaneous.

Thursday 4 PM: Have unexpected adventure.

The fact that I couldn’t see the contradiction tells you everything about optimization programming.

Your college roommate pops into your head for no reason and you want to text them, but then you start wondering if it’s weird since you haven’t talked in six months, what you’d even say, whether they’d think you need something. By the time you’ve analyzed the impulse to death, the moment has passed.

Here’s what I learned: impulses lose their intelligence when you try to optimize them.

This isn’t about never planning anything. If you’re juggling kids and work and aging parents, you probably need to schedule unscheduled time just to have room for impulses to emerge. The difference is between creating space for spontaneity and trying to systematize spontaneity itself.

Plan for space, but don’t plan what fills the space.

That suggestion to drive up the canyon without a destination? It carried information about needing space, movement, beauty. But the moment I would have tried to replicate that experience—planned a weekly “spontaneous drive”—it would have become performance rather than responsiveness.

The person who crosses your mind gets the text before you can talk yourself out of it. The street that looks interesting gets explored without you having to explain why.

The moment you start asking “why do I feel like doing this?” the impulse starts wilting. Some intelligence can only be followed, not analyzed.

4. The Flinch Carries Information About Authenticity

I have perfected the art of deflecting compliments. Someone says “great job on that presentation” and I immediately launch into everything that went wrong: “Oh, the slides were messy and I totally forgot the third point and did you notice how I said ‘um’ seventeen times?”

By the time I’m done dismantling their appreciation, they’re usually backing away slowly.

I’ve been watching myself do this automatic thing: Someone asks what I actually need and I immediately flip it back to them. A friend offers genuine appreciation and I deflect with humor before the words can land. My whole body contracts like I’ve been offered something dangerous.

The flinch isn’t a bug to fix. It’s information about the cost of showing up as yourself.

Here’s what nobody tells you about intimacy: it’s not comfortable.

Your boss says “this presentation was brilliant” and something in your chest wants to close immediately. Not because they’re lying, but because being seen clearly feels like standing in bright light after years of careful dimming.

Real intimacy isn’t sharing more feelings; it’s letting someone else’s reality reorganize something inside you and staying present through that cost.

The practice isn’t eliminating the flinch. Rather, it’s breathing through it long enough to say “thank you” and actually mean it. To let someone pay for your coffee without immediately calculating how to pay them back. To accept help without delivering a dissertation on why you don’t deserve it.

You can’t optimize your way to intimacy. You can only stop interrupting it when it emerges.

5. Humanity Isn’t a System to Perfect

The irony isn’t lost on me that, in a way, I’m writing an article about why you shouldn’t turn your life into an article. If that’s not peak optimization culture, I don’t know what is.

But this is how deep the programming runs. We can’t help but systematize everything, even our resistance to systems. I’ve literally made “don’t optimize” into a five-point framework, which is either hilarious or deeply concerning. Maybe i’ll ask about that in therapy..

The culture that tells you to optimize your aliveness is the same culture that profits from your disconnection. We’ve been sold productivity apps that promise presence, efficiency hacks that claim to create engagement, management systems that masquerade as mastery.

But here’s what I learned from that month of catching my “almosts”: the moments that changed everything couldn’t be tracked, replicated, or turned into a method. The man eating his burger while I picked up my documents. The ladybug settling on my shoulder like the universe had a sense of humor. This reflection emerging from one month of not trying to optimize my way into meaning.

The most radical act might be refusing to turn your humanity into a system to perfect.

Every moment someone needs help and you pause instead of walking past—not because you’ve committed to daily acts of service, but because something in you recognized the invitation to act. Every time you risk saying something true instead of something safe—not because you’re practicing vulnerability, but because the moment asked for truth.

These aren’t practices to perfect or habits to track. They’re interruptions of the programming that turns everything, including wonder, into content for improvement.

Which means that maybe the most alive thing I can tell you is to forget everything I just said and go follow whatever impulse is stirring in you right now, before you can turn it into a plan. 🙃

The Thing About Unoptimized Aliveness

The wellness industry wants you to believe that aliveness is another skill to master, another area for improvement, another project to manage. Management is the opposite of aliveness. Control is the enemy of connection.

The most alive moments emerge from stopping the management long enough to let life surprise you.

This isn’t about being reckless or abandoning all structure.

Rather, it’s about recognizing that some experiences can only exist in the gaps between your systems, in the spaces where you’re not trying to extract value or meaning or personal growth from what’s happening.

So maybe, sometime this week, catch yourself in an “almost” moment. Feel the reflex to calculate and manage, then let one small yes slip past your guard. Text the person who popped into your head. Buy the flowers that made you smile. Take the street that looks interesting.

Don’t document it. Don’t turn it into a practice. Don’t make it part of your personal development journey.

Just let it reorganize you in a way you can’t replicate, and resist the very human urge to figure out how to make it happen again.

Your aliveness doesn’t need your management. It just needs your willingness to stop interrupting it.

If this piece resonated with you, consider sharing it with someone who might recognize their own ‘almost’ moments in it.

I’m Alex Lovell — political psychologist, yoga therapist, and writer.

Lived homeless. Been divorced. Survived a seven-car pileup with a semi. Fell in love with questions that don’t have easy answers. I’ve met a lot of thresholds. Even the one before death.

These days, I split my time between research, writing, and holding space for people figuring out who they are after everything shifted.

This Substack is where I make sense of things out loud.
I write for people in transition — between roles, beliefs, relationships, selves.
The ones quietly wondering, “What now?” but allergic to one-size-fits-all answers.

Sometimes I quote research. Sometimes I quote my own nervous system.
One speaks in data, the other in sensation. I’ve stopped choosing sides.

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