A “Trial Run” that Worked
Tell me what you pay
attention to
and I will tell you who you
are.
-Jose Ortega y Gassett
The science of causing outcomes is the science of
constructively greeting whatever comes into your experience. This science is
often best exemplified by parents when their child’s life is threatened. A
classic instance of such exemplary practice was demonstrated by Susan Bradford,
a single
parent who participated in our self-management training program.
One morning as Susan entered her kitchen to make
breakfast for herself and her three-year-old daughter, Amanda, she found the
child lying on the floor, losing consciousness. Amanda had been awakened by a
now receding storm, and had come to the kitchen to play. An open, empty pill
bottle lying beside her told the rest of the story.
Susan quickly
read the bottle’s label, which warned that death from an overdose could occur
within half an hour of loss of consciousness. Though Susan was still dressed in
her negligee and her hair was in curlers, she scooped Amanda into her arms with
the empty bottle in hand, and ran to her car.
When the car
would not start, Susan dashed back to the house to call a neighbor. The phone
line was dead, as service had been disrupted by a fallen tree. Rather than lose
precious time by going to her neighbor’s house, Susan raced back to the car,
grabbed her now unconscious child, and ran to the nearby freeway. Despite being
so scantily clad, she was unconcerned about either the chilling wind or her
semi-naked appearance. She stepped onto the freeway to wave down a car, and
immediately got a ride. Amanda was at the nearest hospital emergency room in
just a few minutes.
When Susan was
later asked what she would have done had passing motorists ignored her, she
said, “I’d have undressed and laid down naked on the freeway – or whatever else
it took – until someone did stop.”
Even more
relevant to her causing a successful outcome, Susan was also asked what went
through her mind when she read the warning label on the empty pill bottle. “I
saw myself in the hospital emergency room with Amanda,” she said.
Being armed with
this perception, it never occurred to Susan that she wouldn’t make it to the
emergency room in time. She thought of nothing else but being there, and the
response pattern thus established by her mindset moved her to take every
possible step until that’s where she was.
Had Susan’s mind been set merely on getting to the emergency room, rather
than being there, the stalled vehicle and dead phone line might have slowed her
down with competing intentions to start the car or reach a neighbor. It was her
mindset of being at the emergency
room that got her there so quickly in spite of the obstacles to her doing so.
It was the state of her presence of mind – the state of already being there in
her own mind’s eye – that assured her rapidly getting there. Her
predetermination of that outcome was a constructive application of the science
of causing outcomes, which is the practice of being fully in the presence of
your outcome already accomplished in mind, and thus being what happens by being the way that it can and does happen. Susan’s
presence of mind was sensitive to every pertinent detail, which included
carrying with her the empty pill bottle required to inform the ER doctors.
If you feel that you are ready to prove to
yourself what we have presented concerning the science
of causing outcomes and in Susan Bradford’s “trial run”,
click here.