At Cause Or In Effect

Something I’ve built my entire understanding around is the law of cause and effect. Things don’t happen spontaneously or randomly, they’re the byproduct of the interaction between many different factors. If you had full awareness of how everything interrelated then results would be predictable! But that’s not the case, and instead we view the relationship between cause and effect as a probability.

Regardless, what’s interesting to explore is where you put your energy in the relationship. You have two different options. You can be “at cause” where you are creating, designing, structuring, and contributing raw materials of inputs… Or you can be “in effect” where you’re observing the outcome that happened. Being the former means that you have influence and are empowered; being the latter makes you a victim of circumstance.

You want to be at cause as often as possible if you’re committed to changing your life.

Here’s the difference. Let’s say that an athlete used to be a starter but recently got benched. If he were ‘at cause’ then he’d be focused on getting better, identifying his weaknesses, and putting in the work to get his spot back. If he’s ‘in effect’ then he’s angry at the coach and rationalizing what happened.

That’s not to say you shouldn’t be observing your result and learning from what happened, it just does no good in changing it if you don’t do anything differently about it. You study the effect so that you can incorporate the feedback into your next attempt, taking action at cause. 

Especially when a result is disappointing and you start to feel bad for yourself, the easy thing to do is stay in effect. It’s safe and soothing to deflect responsibility. It takes courage to look at your part in it, pick yourself up, and go do something about it - especially if you might fall back down. But that's the only way you can actually influence the result. Choosing to do nothing welcomes more of the same.

My encouragement to you is to think about where in your life you’ve placed yourself ‘in effect’. Is there something that you’ve accepted that “it’s just the way it is”, a dream you’ve silenced, or a standard you’ve been compromising on? If so, imagine what being ‘at cause’ would do for it, what kind of possibilities it would open up, and how things might change if you do.

You regain control of your life when you admit your mistakes, learn from them, and take action ‘at cause’.

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