How To Be At Cause

How to be at cause is truly the stepping stone for being able to create impact in this world. Right now I’m in LA, here for a trainer’s training so that I can be the best trainer for NLP. I don’t talk about this much but this year I received my practitioner and master practitioner certification in NLP and it has been hands down the best training I’ve done for myself--to be able to impact myself and change my own life and mindset as well as being able to use the tools and techniques for my for my clients--to really help them shift their mindset at a subconscious level. I’m here because I’m working on launching my own certification program and my certification is going to be combined with NLP + reiki energy healing because that’s how I coach my clients and the integration of both has been so profound. I’ve had clients that have been doing coaching for years--they got therapy and done all the things--and being able to integrate energy healing into balancing the masculine and feminine, healing wounds, and really stepping into the person you’re here to become--we need both = energy healing + subconscious mindset reprogramming.

The Empowerment Formula

The empowerment formula is about learning how to be at cause--it’s the foundation of personal development and mindset work and as a coach, it’s the foundation of what you teach your clients. If your clients do not know how to be at cause then they’re not going to be able to move forward.

The way that I teach being at cause with my clients is through the empowerment formula. This is cause versus effect. If you’re a visual learner: C > E. What this means is, are you living at cause or effect? When you’re living at effect, you’re living at effect of other people’s lives and this is where you’ll find yourself creating a lot of excuses for why you’re not doing the things you want to be doing. So living at effect sounds like, “Well, I can’t do this until that happens,” or “I wish I could do that but I’m waiting for so and so.” You could be living at effect of the economy, your environment, other people’s actions or you could be living at effect of your own life--this is the number one thing that holds people back, it’s not knowing and not being able to move themselves to cause. So visually, C > E and right below cause would be ‘results’ and right beneath effect would be ‘reasons.’ If someone is living at effect, they’re going to find all the reasons why they haven’t done or can’t do what they want to do. If someone is living at cause, they’re going to have results--they’re going to be in charge of the results of their lives. Ask any person who is successful, has attained success; it’s always because they are the result of their success. Rarely will you find someone who has found success being at effect of something else.

How To Move Yourself to Be at Cause

If there’s any problem that you’re experiencing in life, the question for yourself would be: How am I at cause for this? Way back in the day, a lot of spiritual teachings would result to this question even when there was a war taking place. I always take it a step further, when I have clients who aren’t doing as great as they want or if I’m putting my expectations on them--I ask myself how am I at cause for this? If I attracted a client that wasn’t the right fit for me, how was I at cause for this? Me getting kicked out of my house in high school, how was I at cause for that? It’s very important being able to shift your mindset and to take radical responsibility and personal accountability of your life because as long as you’re living at effect of others, you’re never going to be in control of your life. Control is an illusion, we don’t have control over everything but you do have control over your life when you’re at cause. When I have a client who is really unable to move forward and she feels really stuck, it’s because she’s living at effect. It might sound something like, “Well, my mom never loved me and that’s why we have this relationship.” -- my question to her is, how are you at cause for that? As long as you cannot answer that question, you cannot move forward. That’s going to be the sacrifice of living at effect, you may sacrifice your happiness, your own success, your love because at the end of the day, if we can’t put ourselves at cause--you know it doesn’t mean we have to forgive the other person but you can put yourself at cause which is then going to move you out of resentment or anger and it’s ultimately going to move your towards love.

In my certification course, my trainer was saying how he was at a conference/event and they were talking about the empowerment formula and how to be at cause versus effect and the sensitivity part of the subject is, what if someone was abused growing up (sexually abused, abused by their parents) and a woman came up to the podium and she was sharing her story of how her parents turned her into a child prostitute--the speaker/coach asked her, how were you at cause for that? The woman wanted to be a coach for women who were sexually abused/trafficked and she was having a hard time getting women to heal fully. So, he asked her, where are YOU at with your healing journey? How are YOU at cause for that? The whole audience was shocked that the trainer asked her that, this woman was trafficked by her own parents--how is that her fault? That’s how most of the audience will respond/react to that. I think she was taken aback by the question--she explained that it wasn’t her fault and how she was little and couldn’t make that choice for herself. Towards the end of the training, she was really happy that the trainer asked her that question because now she can see how she was at cause for that--she was able to take ownership and personal responsibility for her past and heal and let go--so she can truly become the best version of herself. So, when you’re working with a client who perhaps is hung up on childhood trauma or past relationship trauma, if they were abused or in toxic relationships--you want to ask this question with the utmost rapport. Rapport is when your energy and subconscious are linked together because when you’re in rapport, the other person/client is going to feel safe, they’re going to feel like they’re in sync with you and it’s not going to feel as if they’re interrogated or questioned. 

When we’re living at effect, these could become beliefs/limiting beliefs and the thing with beliefs is that they’re so deeply rooted in our subconscious that a lot of times when you question someone’s actions/beliefs, as a coach that’s our job, we’re here to bring the best out of our clients so we’re going to want to ask those hard questions that’s going to help shift their mindset. One of the things I always preface with my clients is, I’m not here to be your friend--I’m here to be your coach, because of that I might ask you questions that stretch you out of your comfort zone and really challenge you because it’s an opportunity for you to grow. So you want to make sure you’re in rapport when you’re asking these questions so that they do feel safe to respond to you but we need to ask these questions sometimes. When you can truly be at cause for everything that’s happened in your life, nothing is going to keep you stuck. Nothing is going to hold you back--this is the number one principle for success, you have to be willing to be at cause for every single thing in your life. Whether it’s something bad that happened to you or something positive that’s happened to you.

For myself, I’ve shared this story several times before but when I was in high school--I got kicked out of my house. I just turned 18, it was February 2009 and I got into this really big fight with my dad and he said, “Get out.” I was like, “I will.” For 10 years, I lived at effect of that--I used my willpower to push myself to success but my mindset was, You (my dad) kicked me out, you did this to me--I am the way that I am because of you. I’m so happy that I’ve been able to heal and the only way that I was able to heal was when I took personal responsibility and turned it around on myself and asked, how am I at cause for that? How was I at cause for getting kicked out? Within doing this work, I’m able to look back and understand that ultimately I didn’t want to be there. I didn’t want to live at home. I’m at cause for this because of the poor relationship that I had and I didn’t want to be at home--I wanted to have a better life for myself and as crappy as it sounds, getting kicked out made me stronger. When I finally decided to be at cause for it, a lot of anger and resentment melted away and I could just be kinder to myself.

Being at cause doesn’t mean we have to forgive others if we don’t want to but what it does do is that it helps you forgive yourself. It helps you be back in that power seat, take your power back. So how are you at cause? What is going on in your life right now where you are living at effect and you now have an opportunity to shift and be at cause? Another example I have for you is when I was so tired, I had to surrender. The second part of this was how am I at cause for being so tired? Once I could put myself at cause, I was able to do something about it. When I asked myself this question, I took a look at my lifestyle and saw that I wasn’t working out, I wasn’t eating healthy, I wasn’t journaling, I wasn’t doing meditations/breath work, I wasn’t doing self-care and I was stretching myself too thin. So I decided to take ownership of all of that and to shift my schedule, lifestyle, and prioritize my health again; low and behold, I’m not tired anymore. So being at cause can be a simple shift that can help you do the things you want to do, I wanted to be energized. It can also go as deep as healing and letting go of any abuse/trauma you’ve been holding onto and allowing to dictate your beliefs, to dictate what’s possible for you.

When I’m working with clients and they’re in that victim mindset, I know they won’t get anywhere until they put themselves at cause. When you put yourself at cause, you can gather the positive learning lessons, you can gather the resources from going through that experience. All the experiences we go through in our lives--I truly look at them as teaching moments. If we had easy lives, we wouldn’t be who we are now. The purpose of challenges are to help us grow. Every challenge is personally designed for me for a purpose. If I was stronger, better, or bigger--then it wouldn’t be a challenge. I’m so grateful for the challenges that have really stretched me, the challenges that have caused me to become still and really look within to see how am I at cause for it so that I can be the person that I am now.

One last thing I want to touch on is to remind you that the extent that you are angry/sad about your circumstances is the extent that you will stay stuck. So if you want to move forward/take charge of your life, if you want to achieve the things you want to have, you need to take a really good look at yourself and ask yourself if you’re allowing external circumstances to create the experience of your life. It’s not your circumstances that create your experiences, it’s your thoughts about the circumstances that create your experience. Be at cause. Take charge. Shift your life. Have a positive mindset. Be a victor. Ask yourself how is this happening for me instead of asking why is this happening to me.