RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Man becomes what he thinks about all day long.
This article is part of a series of four articles that explore fundamental universal laws that govern our lives. Here are links to all articles within this series:
- The Universal Law of Cause and Effect
- The Universal Law of Belief
- The Universal Law of Attraction
- The Universal Law of Control
Understanding the Law of Cause and Effect
The universal law of cause and effect states that for every effect there is a definite cause, likewise for every cause there is a definite effect.
Your thoughts, behaviors and actions create specific effects that manifest and create your life as you know it. If you are not happy with the effects you have created, then you must change the causes that created them in the first place…
Change your actions, and you change your life… Transform your thoughts, and you will create a brand new destiny.
Our discussion today will focus on the immutable law of cause and effect and try to represent it in a way that will enable us to take advantage of its principles and use them to improve our lives. We will specifically discuss the premise that life isn’t built upon accidents, chance or luck, while also looking at the dynamics of free choice — examining how we consciously and unconsciously choose what we experience and how we feel on a daily basis. To conclude our discussion we will list down several transformational analysis questions that can help us take advantage of this universal law.
The Law of Attraction
We will not specifically discuss the law of attraction here. However, the law of cause and effect and several other laws are in fact the causes that lead to the effects of the law of attraction. This means, that if we are first able to gather an understanding of these laws, then that will essentially help us to better use the law of attraction to attract what we want most into our lives.
If you have read other blog posts on the IQ matrix blog, you will already know that I am not a big fan of the law of attraction. I feel that it is misrepresented by most people as a short-cut to success because these people have simply failed to understand the true significance of this universal law.
I won’t go into detail of how to manifest what you want into your life, as these principles have already been covered in within the MasterMind Matrix chart. The discussion that follows will instead focus on the law of cause and effect, which is the cause that leads to the effects of the law of attraction.
The Law of Cause and Effect
The law of cause and effect states that:
Every effect has a specific and predictable cause.
Every cause or action has a specific and predictable effect.
This means that everything that we currently have in our lives is an effect that is a result of a specific cause.
These causes are the decisions we make and the actions we take on a daily basis. Whether our decisions seem small and rather insignificant, or whether they are significant and transformational in nature, does not matter. Each and every decision we have made and action we have taken has set events into motion creating predictable and specific effects that we are now experiencing in our lives.
This law of cause and effect further states that:
Success in any field of endeavor is a direct result of specific causes and actions.
Success in any field of endeavor is an indirect result of specific causes and actions.
This basically means that achieving success in any field of endeavor is predictable and can be repeated if we are aware of what we are doing. Which essentially means that if you make the right decisions and take the right actions, you will undoubtedly achieve the success you envision for your life — whether you are directly aware of it or not.
As a consequence the law of cause and effect brings to light the idea that success can be modeled once we are aware of what we want. All we must do is find out what successful people do, and we will be able to do what they do to achieve the success that they have attained in their own lives.
However, finding out what people do is only the beginning. We must also identify their:
- Decisions
- Habits
- Beliefs
- Values
- Emotions
- Meta-programs
- Psychological rules
- Behaviors
- Actions
What this essentially means is that we must intimately study these successful people from within their personal MasterMind Matrix. And only once we have identified how they are in all these areas, can we then take advantage of the law of cause and effect to help us attract similar results and success into our own lives.
There Are No Accidents
The law of cause and effect stipulates that:
Success is not built upon chance or luck.
Success is not determined outside of you.
Success is created within you.
In short, the law states that there are no accidents in this world, and that the effects we create in our lives are a direct result of causes that come from within ourselves.
The law of cause and effect goes onto say that:
Everything happens for reasons, whether good or bad.
Because nothing happens by chance or luck, therefore everything happens for a reason as a direct result of the cause that you brought about from within yourself.
Whether good or bad, life doesn’t play favorites. What you attract into your life is a direct result of the causes you brought forth into existence.
The law of cause and effect goes onto say that:
Your life conditions create effects.
Your life reactions to events and people determines how you feel and behave.
Who you’ve been, are today, and whom you’re becoming tomorrow, is in essence creating the conditions and circumstances of your life and manifesting your future in front of your eyes. In fact, how you react to the events, people and circumstances in your life, is actually determining by how you feel on a daily basis — creating a chain of effects that are constantly transforming your destiny anew every day.
The law of cause and effect also discusses the power of our thoughts:
Your thoughts create causes.
Your thoughts give meaning to circumstances.
Your thoughts are creatively manifesting your reality.
Your life experience is a reflection of thought manifestations.
Within the seed of individual thoughts, lie the origins of the causes we create within our reality. These causes create effects which we experience in our lives as manifested life circumstances. In fact our thoughts do more than just that. They actually give meaning to our experience of reality, which is why each of us holds a different perspective of the world around us.
You Have Always Had Free Choice
The one thing that is completely within our control from the moment we come into this world is our conscious power over our thought processes.
The law of cause and effect states that:
We choose how to interpret our experiences.
We choose to experience emotions both consciously and unconsciously at any one moment in time.
We choose to behave in accordance with how we think about the world, others, events and ourselves.
Because we have free choice to control our thought processes at all times, and since our thoughts create the causes that lead to the effects that we experience in our lives, then this therefore leads us to the conclusion that we have freely chosen to experience life as we know it, whether we are consciously aware of it or not.
The law of cause and effect further states that:
Free choice has created learned behaviors, responses, reactions, thoughts and interpretations of life and circumstances.
We are experiencing life as we know it because of the learned and conditioned psychological patterns we have pre-programmed into our minds over a lifetime of free choice. Moreover, this psychological programming is filtering our experience of reality in a very biased yet very predictable manner — effectively creating and interpreting our existence in front of our eyes.
The law of cause and effect does however provide a solution for this predicament. It states that:
Because we have free choice, this means that we also have free choice to unlearn our thoughts, behaviors and reactions.
Because we have free choice, this means that we also have free choice to become proactive and conscious thinkers.
Free choice means that it is never too late to turn things around.
No matter how unfavorable our circumstances, how dark our predicaments or how unlucky we may have been. Free choice means that we can make a different choice and choose to unlearn what we have learned, and learn what it will take to trigger the causes that will create the effects we desire to experience within our lives.
Transformation Analysis Questions
The law of cause and effect has provided us with several guiding principles that we can now use to create a set of transformational analysis questions that will help us to take advantage of this universal law instead of allowing the law to rule our behavior unconsciously.
The following transformational analysis questions will help you to gain greater clarity about your life and thought processes, allowing you to find the answers that will enable you to achieve the success you desire to experience in your life:
How are my thoughts causing, creating and maintaining my current life circumstances?
How can I begin interpreting my world differently?
How can I change my patterns of thinking?
How can I model other people’s successful behaviors, habits, decisions, thoughts and actions?
Final Thoughts
The principles behind the law of cause and effect are very deep and profound, allowing us to see life not as a set of random occurrences, but rather as a predictable formula of conscious free choice that can be molded and shaped to create the life we would like to experience and enjoy on a daily basis.
This discussion is only the beginning of a series of IQ Matrix maps focused on the universal laws of life that will hopefully shed some light into segments of the MasterMind Matrix, and the unseen universal principles that are guiding and creating our daily realities.
I hope you enjoyed this post. If you have any further queries or questions, or would like to share your experiences about this topic, than please do so in the comments section below.
Time to Assimilate these Concepts
Did you gain value from this article? Would you like to keep these concepts at the forefront of your mind? If so, then you might like to download the accompanying mind map reference poster to your iPad, tablet or computer. The map presents you with a quick overview of this article. It’s designed specifically to help improve your memory and recall of this information so that you can better integrate these concepts into your daily thoughts, habits and actions. Your purchase will also go a long way towards supporting the further development of these maps.
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