It seems that everywhere you turn these days, you hear people talking about the economy. What’s interesting is that some people are scared to death about it, while others couldn’t be happier.
While I don’t claim to be an economist, I do know one important fact. The economy is the same for everyone, it’s how you respond to it that determines how you feel about it.
E + R = O
(Events + Responses = Outcome)
The basic idea is that every outcome you experience in life (whether it’s success or failure, wealth or poverty, wellness or illness, intimacy or estrangement, joy or frustration) is the result of how you have responded to an earlier event (or events) in your life. If you don’t like the outcomes you are currently experiencing, there are two basic choices you can make:
1) You can blame the event (E) for your lack of results (O).
In other words, you can blame the economy, the weather, the lack of money, lack of education, racism, gender bias, the current administration in Washington, your wife or husband, your boss’s attitude, the lack of support, and so on.
If you’re a golfer, you’ve probably even blamed your clubs!
No doubt all these factors exist, but if they were the deciding factor, nobody would ever succeed. For every reason it’s not possible, there are hundreds of people who have faced the same circumstances and succeeded. It’s not the external conditions and circumstances that stop you — it’s you!
We think limiting thoughts and engage in self-defeating behaviors. We defend our self-destructive habits (such as drinking and smoking) with indefensible logic. We ignore useful feedback, fail to continuously educate ourselves and learn new skills, waste time on the trivial aspects of our lives, engage in idle gossip, eat unhealthy food, fail to exercise, spend more than we make, fail to tell the truth, don’t ask for what we want, and then wonder why our lives aren’t working.
2) You can instead simply change your responses (R) to the events (E) until you get the outcomes (O) you want.
You can change your thinking, change your communication, change the pictures and you hold in your head (your images of the world) and you can change your behavior (the things you do.) That’s all you really have any control over anyway.
Unfortunately, most of us are so run by our habits that we never change our behavior. We get stick in out conditioned responses - to our spouses and children, to our colleagues at work, to our customers and our clients, to our students, and to the world at large.
You have to gain control of your thoughts, your images, your dreams and daydreams, and your behavior. Everything you think, say, and do needs to become intentional and aligned with your purpose, your values, and your goals.
If you don’t like your outcomes, change your responses. If we all experience the same EVENT, the OUTCOME you get will be totally dependent upon your RESPONSE to the situation. If you want to take control of how you respond to life, you’ll start noticing that your outcomes will be more along the lines of what you have always hoped. Remember, you control your destiny so make it a fantastic one!
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