The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all. Ecc 9:11 NIV "They really should..." begins another tirade of disgust at the ineptitude of the leadership to fix the problems. "Why they can't..." interjects the thought of an easy fix that "anyone with an ounce of real experience would have known from the start". "Why doesn't somebody do something?" "Why doesn't God do something about this?" And then, if you quiet your mind for just one moment, you'll hear him say "I did. I created you!" And He gave you choice: You can react to whatever the world, your boss, the economy, a pandemic throws at you, or you can choose to take action to overcome the obstacles in front of you. It's easier to react, like a thermometer, and blame others for the tragedies that befall you. It requires a lot less energy. But you won't be happy with the results, until you choose to be like a thermostat, someone at cause for their life. Purpose Here we're going to understand why it's easy to fall into a survival thinking mode and live a less than fulfilled life and how you can break that cycle and choose to be at cause for your life and actions. Process We'll discuss the two thinking modes and how you can shift yourself from being the victim of survival mode to being at cause and creating your future. Payoff It's not that one cycle is better than another, it's realising that we have a choice and that most people, most of the time, are at effect because they don't make a deliberate choice to take charge. Are you at Cause or Effect? Life happens. "Life happens whilst you're making other plans." John Lennon. Most people, most of the time, just allow life to happen to them. They react to whatever the day brings. They are happy when their happenings are conducive to their happiness, otherwise they are unhappy. They may have a plan, but they are easily blown off course and, unless the winds of chance so happen to return them back, off course they remain. This is completely understandable behaviour for your brain. Unconsciously, your brain is always scanning the environment for threats and changes and reacting to them with little, if any, requirement for energy expensive conscious processing. If you make a deliberate choice to pre-empt environmental circumstances and choose to take action - that is conscious, executive brain processing - which is energy expensive. The downside of allowing your brain to be lazy is that you are essentially allowing other people to choose your circumstances and hence your life. Of course, this might be utterly wonderful - hopefully you had a happy and splendid childhood and everything went swimmingly. Perhaps you are blessed with an incredible boss who gently nudges you to do what is essential, pays you extravagantly well and expects little in return. You have a choice. A very simple choice: To be a thermostat or a thermometer. You can choose to create your future, or you can accept the one that you get. Every moment of every day, you make a choice. If you are in a survival mode, that is you're just trying to get by and survive, the chances are that you will react to a new situation. You will then face an obstacle in your path. And you get another choice, this time you can choose to avoid the obstacle or address it. Avoidance of obstacles leads you to adapt and change yourself thanks to the obstacle that someone else put in your way. And you will get undesired results. Which results in disappointment and reinforces your survival vision to just try and get by for another day. On the other hand, when you have a creative vision you choose to take action. Sure, the same obstacles lie in your path but this time, you are going to address the problem and experiment until you find a desired solution and get the results you want. This means that you can, and should, celebrat

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