[tailung]

well, I think that if you are aware (mindfulness) about your thought patterns you can steer them, and usually what you think you become, because your thoughts drive actions.

In my personal experience practicing self awareness has helped with this. I understand that there are factors outside of our control, but what goes on within us can be controlled to some extent with effort and time.

[Timwi]

You cannot control physics though. What goes on in your brain is entirely just physics.

We have a subjective impression of control, but that too is only the result of physics.

[mongol]

There is more to it than just "physics". I find the "Orchestrated objective reduction" hypothesis by Penrose and Hameroff interesting in this regard

[adamdusty]

I dont think you can just blanket it under physics. Plenty of controllable systems exist specifically due to physics.