Choosing to Be At Cause or At Effect

09/30/23 • 12 min

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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 ... my parents had... I could have...

If only I ... were a different race, gender, nationality, person ... I should have...

If only I ... had studied harder, taken that job, not taken that job, gotten married, not gotten married, had kids, not had kids...

“If only” pines over the past.

The second enemy is “What if...”

What if... I fail, succeed, look stupid ...

“What if...” frets about the future.

The problem of these two enemies is that they give you the illusion of control over others or external events!

That is, you think that worrying about something makes a difference!

"Your mind would rather fret about the future or pine over the past so that it can cling onto its own illusion of control." But the current moment cannot be controlled. So our mind discounts it and we forget to savour and enjoy every now moment.”

Adapted from Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts

The Great Benefits of facing Challenges

No battles. No spoils.

Without challenges in life, life becomes tremendously boring and mundane. We wouldn’t learn and grow. Anythin...

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 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”?

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 ... my parents had... I could have...

If only I ... were a different race, gender, nationality, person ... I should have...

If only I ... had studied harder, taken that job, not taken that job, gotten married, not gotten married, had kids, not had kids...

“If only” pines over the past.

The second enemy is “What if...”

What if... I fail, succeed, look stupid ...

“What if...” frets about the future.

The problem of these two enemies is that they give you the illusion of control over others or external events!

That is, you think that worrying about something makes a difference!

Adapted from Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts

The Great Benefits of facing Challenges

No battles. No spoils.

Without challenges in life, life becomes tremendously boring and mundane. We wouldn’t learn and grow. Anythin...

Previous Episode

This is Your Brain on Joy

It’s not all doom and gloom in the brain! There’s the positive aspects of Eustress and on the flip side of fear, anxiety and depression, we can feel Pleasure, Happiness and Joy!

If you ask, most people will tell you that their goal in life is to be happy. Indeed the United States Declaration of Independence considers the “Pursuit of Happiness” to be an unalienable right.

But there’s a problem. When most people think about happiness, they’re really thinking about what gives them pleasure and having more of those things. These are by definition, temporal - Aristotle referred to this as Hedonia, which is happiness as pleasure.

Eudainomia, on the other hand is happiness as personal Fulfilment.

Let’s begin with a quick reminder about the six essential human needs and then examining the important differences between the three states: Pleasure, Happiness and Joy.

Six Essential Human Needs Recap

Everyone shares six essential human needs that drive our behaviour to satisfy those needs. When those needs are not being met or they are threatened, our fear, stress and anxiety response kick in.

The more basic the need, usually, the more pressing our response.

For example, freedom needs were being threatened across the globe throughout the COVID pandemic by well-intentioned authorities. At first your response, like most people, was accepting such limitations on your freedom as justified and “for the greater good” (notice how they appealed to your need to belong and transcend and care for others!)

As the weeks and months passed with further restrictions imposed, your freeze, flight or fight response kicked in. Some of you kept your heads down and stayed quiet until the danger passed. Others, with the means, ran off to other countries with fewer restrictions. Others fought against the restrictions risking arrest, fines and worse.

In a moment, we’ll also see how those more basic needs are the key areas of our hedonic pleasures in life. We’ll also see how our higher needs are areas of Eudainomic happiness and joy.

Pleasure

Pleasure is visceral when we enjoy taking something from outside of ourselves, like taking pleasure in eating, having a good massage or receiving an encouraging message from a friend.

Pleasure is short-lived and is experienced alone.

Pleasure can be addictive and may also be achieved through the use of substances.

Pleasure is tied to the neurotransmitter dopamine which fires motivation and desire. The dopamine pathway includes five areas of receptors in your brain:

Happiness

Happiness is ethereal, circumstantial, outward expression and usually involves us giving or serving others, like volunteering to help a charity, organising community events, giving money to someone in need.

Happiness is longer term and experienced in social groups

Happiness is not addictive and cannot be achieved through the use of substances.

Happiness is tied to the neurotransmitter Serotonin which regulates your mood and general well-being. The serotonin pathways touch at least 14 receptor areas in the brain:

Joy

Joy is an ethereal state of mind. It is a choice you make in spite of your circumstances, often manifest as encouraging, giving and serving others.

As a choice, joy is always available to you that overflows to your social groups.

It may be addictive and similar feelings may be achieved through the use of substances (though only for self and not for others).

Joy is linked to the neurotransmitters Serotonin (as happiness) and Anandamide - an endocannaboid fatty acid which binds to the cannabis (CB1) receptors of the brain. These receptors are throughout the brain in the Cortex, Cerebellum, Hippocampus and Basal Ganglia and throughout the body.

The Timeline of Pleasure, Happiness and Joy

As I was researching this, I began to notice a difference in tense people use when considering each facet of these phenomena.

The event(s) is now and in the future, I am choosing to respond appropriately now

#😲 Insight: Pleasure, Happiness and especially Joy appear to be the flip side of fear, stress, anxiety and depression.

It is both difficult to feel pleasure or happiness when you are fearful or stressed AND difficult to feel fear, stress, anxiety or depressed when you are filled with ha...

Next Episode

How to Raise Performance and have Joy@Work

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From what we’ve learned so far, we know that to raise performance anywhere, we need to be able to choose to be At Cause.

We’ve also learned about the affects of five important neurotransmitters: Dopamine (pleasure), Serotonin (happiness), Cortisol (stress), Adrenaline (fear), Anandamide (Peace and Joy).

We need to know about four additional Neurotransmitters in your brain’s “cocktail bar”: Oxytocin (love, trust), Vasopressin (attachment), Endorphins (resilience) and Acetylcholine (focus).

Stay with me, because I am coming back to the impact on your leadership and performance improvement @work. Meantime, let’s talk about love:

Love, often confused with joy or happiness (and sometimes pleasure) is a combination of two things: Attachment and Attraction:

Attachment

Attachment is tied to the neurotransmitters Oxytocin and Vasopressin. Oxytocin is known as the “love and trust” chemical. It’s responsible for increasing the bonding between a mother and her new born, and for that trusting relationship bond with a colleague or team member.

Vasopressin’s effects are less well understood but it appears to be gender specific. For men, Vasopressin is believed to make men more suspicious, even aggressive, towards novel males. Thus a new male joining the team may be viewed with more suspicion by the other males in the team.

In contrast, for women, it appears that Vasopressin makes them friendlier towards novel women.

Attraction

When you enjoy doing something, you are attracted to it, which makes you feel “happy” with a cascade of Dopamine, Norepinephrine and Serotonin.

You can see why feeling attracted to someone or something can easily get confused with fear mixed with pleasure mixed with happiness! Explains a lot that I wish I’d known when puberty struck!

It’s also why attraction can also cause a lack of appetite (your digestive tract got shut down in the fear response!) and a loss of sleep (which is affected by Serotonin).

Performance Enhancement

As you do things well and get into your “zone” or in your “flow”, your performance improves thanks to the additional cascade of Anandamides and Endorphins.

Endorphins are your brain’s natural pain killers. They are released to help cope when your body feels pain or stress. You can get a boost of these through exercise or any demanding activity.

Performance improvement @work

Ok, we’ve got the necessary foundational understanding.

When you do something that matters to you, you are attachedto it (Oxytocin and Vasopressin).

When you do something that you enjoy, you are attracted to it and just a little fearful (Dopamine, Norepinephrine and Serotonin).

Then you get into your zone or flow or your high performancestate (Anandamides and Endorphins).

You stay focused on task because the dopamine high mixed with a little fear to make it an exciting challenge triggers Acetylcholine - and signals your Reticular Activating System (RAS) to focus attention on the task at hand.

These eight neurochemicals significantly enhance performance and is addictive (scientists prefer to use the word “autotelic”). Hence we experience “flow” in our performance and we will go out of our way to re-experience it. Basically, we increase our own intrinsic motivation and inspiration to continually enhance our own performance!

AND there’s more! These chemicals also augment the creative process and pattern recognition. Oxytocin and Vasopressin disregulate your Neo-cortex, widening your self perspective, liberating your mind to new thoughts and feelings. Making us more creative and faster in how we do things!

Command and Control leaders should be aware that, in contrast, fear narrows perspective and inhibits performance and increases distress further degrading performance!

Which would you choose?

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