VICTIM OR IN CONTROL?  This morning I was reflecting on the natural law of “cause and effect” and thinking how liberating this law is when we really understand it. We can’t have it both ways.  Either our decisions and input matters and creates or contributes to our reality or it doesn’t.  Either we can initiate, create, mold and shape our reality or we have to wait for input from our environment and always be in a response mode. Our results have a cause.

We change the cause and our results have to change too. Our past thoughts, decisions, and actions have created our current realities.  If we want different results, then we have to change the input.

Isn’t it exciting that we are the creators of our reality, that we get to choose?  We get to decide what we will put our energies into and those decisions create the effects we now experience. So many people meander through life following the masses and feeling and acting like victims.  They see the world as pins and themselves as pin cushions, powerless to stop or curtail the pain.  Their primary response to the world is “fight or flight”, and the world from their perspective is a cruel and unhappy place.

Think about it, if you are a victim, then you have no control over the outcome.  If the person victimizing or causing you pain chooses not to change their ways, you’re stuck!  I’d much prefer to own some part of the outcome.  That empowers me to change my circumstances.  “Self-actualized” beings have broken free from the pack.  They realize that they have unlimited power.  They own up to reality and know that what they are perceiving, they had some hand in creating.

In my workshops, I frequently encourage participants to answer this question to help them take credit or responsibility for their actions. Owning up to the life we have created causes us to cease feeling like victims and that is empowering. Whenever they look at a specific reality that is not to their liking, they must answer the question honestly:

“What did I do or NOT do to cause the the happen or NOT TO happen?

Barbara