The orienting framework for this is the concept of "control", which can be deduced from the concept of autonomy (feeling like being in control of your actions) and competence (feeling like you're able to exert control through your abilities). These are cornerstones of feeling like you are able to exert control and influence over your surroundings and in your life in general. What happens when you feel like you lack control? You develop various symptoms of negative emotion and cognition: Anxiety: a state of hypervigilance, which may involve a worry about what may happen in the future that will lead to a bad outcome (or not happen the way you want it to go, the way you are willing to it go if you could control it). With worry, it's the feeling of lack of control projected into the future. It might not necessarily involve a specific (lack of) competancy but maybe a general one like inability to predict the future (i.e. uncertainty), which is a potent cause of anxiety. Rumination: thinking about something that went bad in the past, a goal you didn't achieve, or some problem you seem to be unable to get over or solve. It's the feeling of lack of control projected into the past (or the immediate past if it's happening concurrently, a.k.a. "now" but still in the form of a thought so still technically the past). Getting stuck in endless "problemsolving" that goes nowhere is a typical sign of rumination. Depression: which might involve helplessness (not knowing what to do or how to do it, and therefore not doing anything) or hopelessness (not thinking this will ever change). These are less operational forms of feelings of lack of control as they don't entertain or mobilize for action (unlike in anxiety and rumination) but simply cease or accept that no action will work. This manifests physically as (or is associated with) psychomotor retardation, low mood, low energy, the typical "immobilizing" symptoms of depression. You could think of depression in the form of helplessless and hopelessness as the extreme endpoints of negative emotion and cognition, because they represent the extreme endpoints of feeling of lack of control ("nothing works, nothing will ever work"), and because while anxiety and rumination might not necessarily involve depression, depression often involves anxiety and rumination.   And how does mindfulness, spirituality, cognitive flexibility, deal with these issues of lack of control (e.g. meditation, letting go of identification, etc.)? You might simply accept the lack of control and thus gain control in that (i.e. you identify with whatever is happening and it's you, so nothing bad can ever really happen, nothing really needs to be controlled, because it's fine anyway whatever happens). Acceptance is the very pure mirror image of helplessness and hopelessness, because you are always able to let go and opt out of the need to control and therefore opt into absolute control (as opposed to being perpetually stuck). But do you want to let go? That is always the issue. That's the crux of all the world's problems. But still, it's a good thing to have in the toolbox, a good thing to be aware of, and a good thing to know that you can orient yourself towards when you perhaps realize everything else is hopeless (be it due to depression or simply knowing nothing in life will every fulfill you at the deepest level, will never alleviate your suffering at the root, only temporarily soothe it). Because, the cognitive machinery associated with anxiety, worry, rumination, depression, is always active to some degree as long you are identified with that which needs to survive. The brain and the organism evolved these things because it was good for surviving (predicting things in the future, keeping account of things in the past, honestly judging your feeling of progress and performance). So as long you identify with survival, that is what you will experience to some degree or another (unless you are in complete control and acting perfectly in accordance with your autonomy and competence, which is possible to a huge extent that many might not appreciate but is still a relatively rare and even fragile state: this is where the emotions and cognitions take on a highly positive and excited and passionate form like the creative and productive states you can get in while working on something meaningful or doing something you love; the self-referential machinery flips over to the self-transcendent and self-actualizing machinery). But you will probably keep doing that for a while more so it's good to know these things until then.