Cause and effect - where are you at right now?

Carol was out with Ellie for a drink and a chat. Both were friends and liked to spend time together. 

“How is everything with you?” asked Ellie while bringing the drinks over.

“Well things would have been great only my workplace has announced that there are going to be some redundancies. I have spent 10 years working my fingers to the bone for that company and what do I get in return but the risk of redundancy? Clearly they are going to want to get rid of me, as one of the, let's just say more mature staff.” Carol sighed.

“Oh that’s not great news, but will there be a redundancy package?” Ellie asked. “Yeah but you know Andrew's school has decided to introduce school uniform next year, more expense.” 

“How is Andrew doing? Last time you said he was really enjoying school” enquired Ellie. “Yeah he was but now they have changed his teacher who hasn’t got a clue how to do his job, his approach is teaching the kids that if they don’t do their homework they will get detention, it's making Andrew less motivated, he’s only 14 and the last thing he needs is this pressure.”

“Yeah but pressure and deadlines are part of life and work, at least he will learn of the importance of these.” Ellie stated. “The education system is such a mess”, Carol responded and changed the subject quickly. “I can’t believe I could be made redundant in a few months”.

Ellie said “But with 10 years of experience and redundancy money, surely you stand a good chance of getting another job?”, “Why does it always have to happen to me?”

Later that day Ellie thought about Carol, she was always blaming this person or that person, the government or anyone else she could blame. Sometimes it was down to other people and the Government, are they always so blameless? However Ellie hadn’t had things easy, she too had lost her job but there was no redundancy package and she had only received a weeks notice as the company had gone into receivership.

Sure it was hard to deal with at the time and she had to pull out all her resources to find another job, which she did and thankfully it involved better promotion opportunities.

Where are you? Are you like Carol at cause or are you like Ellie at effect? Certainly life has a tendency of presenting us with difficult situations, circumstances which cause us a great deal of pain and suffering, and we may or may not have had some responsibility in what happened. However whether there is a portion of us contributing to the cause, or it happened and was out of our control. What we can do is take control of what we do about it, take action by looking at what’s happened and seeing if we can learn from the situation, reflect on it and plan where to go from there.

No it is not easy to do, sometimes you need guidance and support to explore what has happened and deal with the effects of the cause. Then work out where you go from that point - what can you do to take control and make an informed choice and move from cause to effect?