Stanley F. Bronstein – Personal Development BlogPersonal Development Blog of the Founder of the Achievement IQ Movement and Creator of the Laws of Positioning

Meditation for Sunday – March 7, 2010

One Way To Eliminate The Effect Is To Eliminate The Cause.

One – Being a person, thing, or individual instance or member of a number, kind, group, or category indicated.

Way – Manner, mode, or fashion.  A method, plan, or means for attaining a goal.

Eliminate – To remove or get rid of.  To remove from further consideration or competition.

Effect – Something that is produced by an agency or cause.  A result.  A consequence.

Cause – The reason or motive for some action.  A person or thing that acts, happens, or exists in such a way that some specific thing happens as a result.

Some People Are Causes

Some people are of the type where they frequently take the first action in a given situation.  As a result, they are primarily “causes.”  They act in a given situation and then everyone else around them reacts to them.

They are “causes.”  Everyone else that happens around them are “effects.”

What Is This Quote Suggesting?

It suggests there is more than one way to eliminate effects.

• One way to eliminate effects (the reactions) would be to remove the cause (the initial action). – THIS IS CONTROLLING OTHERS
• Another way to eliminate effects (the reactions) is to simply ignore the cause (the initial action).  In other words, one may simply choose to not react. – THIS IS CONTROLLING YOURSELF

So, Which Way Is Best?

The answer is neither is best.  First of all, if something is a positive cause, one will probably not want to eliminate it.

Assuming the cause is a negative one that produces a negative result, then both methods prove to be necessary.  That’s because, no matter one may try,  it is sometimes impossible to remove a negative effect.

In other words, I’m suggesting that both the person who is the “cause” and the person who is the “effect” have to take responsibility for what happens.

So, if you can’t eliminate the negative effect, then you need to eliminate the way you react to that effect.

Sometimes The Negative Cause Likes To Blame The Effect For Their Reaction

One thing I’ve learned over the years is that people who cause negative responses in others usually don’t like to take the blame for their actions.

Instead, they like to act like jerks and then blame others when they react negatively to their poor behavior.

I had this happen to me in the past week.  Someone really acted poorly towards me and when I reacted negatively, they tried to throw it back on me and tell me that I was overreacting.

Ha, ha.  Imagine my reaction at that point.  I proceed to “carefully” and “calmly” point out to them that had they not acted poorly in the first place, there would have been no need for me to react negatively.

However, here’s where the second option came in.  Ultimately, I had to decide to ignore their poor behavior and choose to control my reactions.  That’s because I could not control them, but I could control myself.

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