A Powerful Formula for Living

I learned the following formula fairly recently from reading The Success Principles by Jack Canfield. On the face of it, this formula seems so simple and obvious. You would think that this is common sense and that the whole world must know about it and live it. But from what I've learned from experience, and even in my own life for many, many years, this formula really seems unknown to most people. I can think of lots of people who have gone through their entire lives never realizing something like this. Here is the formula:

E + R = O

(Event + Response = Outcome)

Event: This could be anything. From getting a paper cut on your pinkie finger, to getting cut off in traffic, to finding out that your best friend totally disagrees with you on a hot-button political issue, to getting fired from your job, to learning that you have cancer.

Response: Now here is the critical element. If any of the above events happened to you, how would you respond? Would you be angry? Furious? Mildly upset? Amused? Disbelieving?

Outcome: Your outcome all depends on your response. So say somebody got cut off in traffic. One person might be terribly pissed off, honk their horn, give the finger, escalate it into road rage, etc. Somebody else might be flustered for a second and then just let it go and forget about it. Or say somebody was told that they had cancer and only had a year to live. One person might be devastated and think God was against them, become enormously depressed, and die even sooner than one year. Another person might respond by going out and doing all those things they never did, and actually living more fully in that last year than in the previous ten years combined.

So the basic point is this: you have the power to choose your response. An event is just an event. An event just is, it just happens. You decide if it is a good or bad event, or something in between. You decide how you will respond emotionally. You decide what the event means to you; the event, in itself, has no inherent meaning until you ascribe one to it. You decide whether an event is hugely important or just a fleeting little insignificant trifle. But the trick is that each one of us can have a completely different response to an event. Something that sets you off to explode in rage, might for me just be a little nuisance, or not a big deal at all. We are all different. But the point is, that it is our response that is different, not the event.

A lot of people I know, instead of examining how they respond to an event, blame the event instead. For example, suppose you've planned to go out for a picnic for a very special occasion. It's been planned for weeks and weeks, you get all the food prepared and have your basket ready and your bottle of champagne. Lately the weather has been particularly gorgeous, too, so you're really looking forward to that special day. But then the day arrives and just as you get ready to go out the door to the park a huge storm cloud appears. The sky turns pitch black and the rain just pours and pours, along with thunder and lightning. The day is a total washout. So how would you respond?

Now, I'm not saying that you wouldn't have a right to be upset in such a situation. I'm not saying that the goal, necessarily, is to be always be ecstatically-giddy-happy-lovey-dovey about every single event that ever happens to you in your life. The important thing, rather, is to notice the intensity of your response to an event. The intensity could determine the level of suffering you bring upon yourself. Through mindful awareness of your response to an event, you can control what emotion you will feel as well as the intensity of it. Is a rained out picnic, as one example of an event, worth being horribly angry and devastated? Is it the event's fault that you're upset or could choose not to be upset? Could there be a better response? Could you find an alternative outcome to turn the day around into something positive instead of letting the unexpected event (the rain) ruin your whole day?

There is no right or wrong answer. The answer is what you decide works best for you. But once you realize that you have the power and you have control over how you respond to an event, then you also have the capability to limit or determine how much suffering you bring upon yourself (and, potentially, to others). You bring the suffering upon yourself or you do not. It is ultimately your choice.

Think of events that set you off. Could you choose a different response? If you don't like the outcomes that you are getting in your life, take a look at how you are responding and try something different.

Just something interesting to think about. I often wonder what kind of world we could create if we taught children this concept from day one.