The Science of Causing Outcomes

Taking Mindful Self-Command

Experience is not what happens to us,

it is rather what we do with what happens to us.

–Aldous Huxley

All outcomes are caused, and every self-outcome is self-caused.

None of your life’s outcomes “just happens” to you or for you, for even when things do “just happen” around you, your experience of their happening is determined by your response. Although you lack full command of the world’s happenings, you do have sufficient self-command to respond constructively to whatever may happen around you.

Our ability to self-command our experience of whatever is happening around us was demonstrated by two artists as they witnessed a fire that burned their studio to the ground. One looked on helplessly while shedding tears of sadness for his loss. The other made several quick sketches of the dramatic scene for later completion. One responded with lamentation for things past, the other with anticipation of future possibilities. Neither of their self-outcomes was commanded by the fire itself.

The science of causing outcomes is the science of mindful self-command. Mindfulness commands the full presence of your being, as it empowers you to be acutely knowing and discerning of, responsive to, and directive of your relationship to the present moment, and thus to be constructively responsive to whatever is happening around you.

Taking Focused Action

Trust only movement.

Life happens at the level of events not of words.

Trust movement.

-Alfred Adler

Mindful causation of self-outcomes is an applied science of intentional movement – of taking every step required to cause an intended constructive outcome of your choice. No amount of wishing, thinking, affirming, declaring, choosing, or any other mental activity is in itself sufficient to cause an intended outcome until you accompany it with movement in the form of action that is consistent with the outcome’s accomplishment.

All outcomes are impeded by whatever unmet challenges stand in the way of their accomplishment. Effective action is required to neutralize any barriers and obstacles that thwart your accomplishment of an intended outcome. The science of causing outcomes makes the crucial difference between having the outcome you intend rather than having the reasons why the outcome is unaccomplished. Making this difference requires specificity of intention and direction, without which you can only prove what the Cheshire Cat told Alice (in Wonderland), “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.” And your proof will consist of whatever reasons you give for your non-accomplishment.

Your own best road to any outcome you intend to accomplish is your own experience and experiment of getting there. Both of these words signify action, in accordance with their common Latin root, the verb experire, which means to “try out”. Every experience is a “trial run” – and, therefore, an “experiment” – which the French acknowledge by using the same word (expérience) to signify both meanings. The fact that life itself is a “trial run” is evidenced by the trial-and-error-and-retrial nature of the evolutionary process.

[Please note well, however, that “trying out” is not to be confused with what most people mean when they promise that they will “try” to do something, for statements of “I’ll try” almost always signify an undisclosed intention not to accomplish the outcome in question.]

In addition to specificity of intention and direction, mindful application of the science of causing outcomes also requires you to be undistracted by competing intentions. However “good” may all of your numerous intentions be, the only ultimately good intentions are those that you accomplish.

For an example of a “trial run” that worked, and why it worked, click here.

For an opportunity to prove to yourself what we have presented above and in the “trial run” example, click here.