Choosing to Be At Cause or At Effect

Regardless of your choices in life, you will face adversity, trauma, threats, difficulties, trials and tribulations - such as family or relationship issues, health problems, financial concerns, or workplace stressors. Everybody does. Nobody likes it, nobody wants to, but everybody does.

How you respond to those challenges makes all the difference in the world!

Where is your Locus of Control - “At Cause” or “At Effect”?

When you choose to be “At Cause” for your life, your focus is on choosing your actions and this increase your Circles of Power and Influence expanding them into your Circle of Concern. You have an Internal Locus of Control - that is, you believe that you have control over external forces in your life.

When you are “At Effect” of others or circumstances, your focus is on factors outside your inner circles, your Concerns gain ground, shrinking your Circles of Power and Influence. You have an External Locus of Control - that is you believe that external forces beyond your control have control over your life.

When you are “At Effect” you are more likely to experience anxiety, which gives you the illusion of control over others or over external events.

This bears repeating: When you are anxious or you worry, this gives you the illusion of control over others or external events!

Congratulations, your anxiety and worry about something beyond your control just reinforced and perpetuated your need to be anxious and worry!

On the other hand, when you choose to be “At Cause” you are reinforcing your stress resilience.

Remember The “Shortcut” and The “High Road”?

You’ll notice that I say that you "are At Effect versus you “choose to be At Cause”. That’s because your default is to be At Effect. It’s not a conscious, thought through, choice. It’s unconscious and automatic. Choosing to be At Cause is a conscious, considered, deliberate choice you make.

As our brain senses information about the challenge ahead, you’ll recall what we learned in Fear, Stress, Anxiety and Depression in Your Brain that stimuli from the outside world first take “The Shortcut” either directly to the amygdala (smells and touch) or via the Thalamus to the amygdala (sights and sounds). That is: your brain is already reacting and responding to the threat of the challenge ahead!

Meantime, some information takes the “High Road” through the cortex and your thinking brain can choose to change or reinforce the threat response. Milliseconds after your brain and body have started to react and respond, this is your moment of choice! This is the moment you can choose to be “At Cause”.

How does this help me? How do I stop worrying, anxiety and distress? Let me be clear, there isn’t a magic pill that does this (no matter what Big Pharma tries to tell you) but we do have access to a simple solution. Before that though, let’s recognise two common enemies we all have in the (conscious) mind.

Two Enemies of Being “At Cause”

And allies of remaining “At Effect”

People, most often, spend much of their time and energy worrying or concerned about the challenges that they cannot control, which cause them to feel anxious or stressed.

The first enemy is “If only…”

If only I had the [skills, money, strength, power, connections, knowledge, fortitude, faith] I would have…

If only …