Throughout your life you’ve been conditioned and conditioned yourself to believe in certain cause and effect relationships. Some of your cause-effect relationships may be faulty, however, because you formed in your mind some of those cause-effect relationships at times when you were too young, too ignorant, too traumatized, and/or too inexperienced to adequately evaluate the evidence at hand.

With practice, you’ve perfected your cause and effect relationships to such an extent that they have become automatic – so much so that you simply accept them as truth without question. Further, you tend to apply the “rules” of those relationships to later similar events. For example, the rule that “men cannot be trusted” because (cause-effect) one molested me as a child – taints all future encounters – setting up romantic interludes for failure before they even start. And there’s the first rub – your faulty cause-effect relationships have become so automatic you no longer question them – in fact, you may indeed be completely unaware of many of them.

As physicists have discovered, there is no way to know ALL the possible outcomes of any given action. Probability dictates that a specific outcome may be far more likely than another. Still, there is no way to absolutely know for sure that a specific outcome (effect) will occur due to a specific action (cause). Conversely, it is impossible to determine with absolute surety a cause from an effect – there are just too many variables involved. That is why science deals in probabilities rather than certainties – cause and effect is simply impossible to connect with absolute surety. And there’s the second rub – you cannot with surety determine cause from effect or effect from cause.

And then there is the third rub – the fact that we as humans love to be right. In short, we are willing to ascribe any cause to any effect if we feel it makes us right, proper, or justified. We can even convince ourselves that these cause-effect relationships are true no matter how absurd or unrealistic they may be. We’re even willing, in most cases, to defend our cause-effect relationships against an onslaught of contradicting evidence. Justification gives us permission to lie, cheat, steal, make war, and worse in the name of being right. God is still God (metaphorically) no matter how strong the evidence against the concept. Rightness is more important that truth.

Turning Cause and Effect on Its Head

The keyword here is the word “because” – in English the word “because” joins together our cause-effect relationships. Something is so BECAUSE something else is so. Someone did something BECAUSE something else happened. Something will happen BECAUSE something else happened. Because, because, because… In this series of exercises, you will be challenging your most treasured and sacred cause-effect relationships so they become exposed to your conscious awareness and no longer as automatic.

Exercise 1 – Real Effect, Unrelated Cause

Every time you hear yourself say or think the word “because” – in your mind create a nonsense joiner. A joiner is the ending to a sentence – the part that comes after the word, “because.” For example, if I were to normally say, “I’m going out tonight because I deserve it.” Instead I might say something like, “I’m going out tonight because that door is open.” – completely separating cause from effect. With practice this fun and often comical game can become a real powerful therapy all by itself.

Exercise 2 – Specific Real Negative Effect, Unrelated Absurd Cause

Every time you notice that you are doing something that does not support your goals tell yourself in your mind, “I’m [doing this real action] because [absurd description of something impossible].” For example, “I’m eating this cake because gorillas are purple.” In this exercise your job is to make the joiner absolutely as absurd and impossible as you can. Get ridiculous with this exercise – only use it when you have done something you know you should not have done.

Exercise 3 – Specific Real Positive Effect, Unrelated Real Material Cause

Every time you notice that you have done something that supports your goals – like exercising – tell yourself in your mind, “I did that because I have [some item in your world].” For example, if you are seeking to drop some pounds and you just came in after exercising, you might say to yourself, “I just exercised because there is a window in my kitchen.” In this exercise your job is to create a joiner that is true yet not related at all to the behavior (what does a kitchen window have to do with you exercising, for example). Remember – do this exercise ONLY for those times when you notice that you are doing what will support your new body image.

To reinforce and energize this series of exercises you can document your experiences in a journal. The overall goal of these exercises is to get you to pay attention to your cause-effect relationships – to respond to them – and in the end, challenge them. Don’t let them just “be” – check your “evidence” against adult reason. Just because someone hurt you when you were a child does not necessarily mean they or someone else is going to hurt you now.

What More Can You Do?

Objectify your evidence – Pretend you are an alien, unfamiliar with our culture. How would such an alien look at your evidence? Forgive - Acknowledge that you goofed when you made your “because” truth. It happens all the time in humans. So, you were human! So what?! Move on!

Become a skeptic – You can do it. Challenge your becauses each time you hear or recognize them. Here’s some ideas:

• Ask yourself, “Is this really true?” – “Do I really know this is true?” – “Can I know this is really true?”
• Ask yourself, “Who would I be without this truth?”
• Ask yourself, “What OTHER reasons could there be?” – “If this were not true, what ELSE could be true instead?”
• Ask yourself, “Where could I have gotten THAT idea?” – “Who taught me to believe that?” (and when?)

Identify which – Note whether you are attempting to make yourself right, justified, or proper (to fit in with your peers). It’s okay to be right – and we tend to feel better when we feel our actions are justified – it’s when being right or justified means everthing that we can have a problem. And how wars erupt.

Take charge – Your cause-effect relationships are yours, so own them. Only the owner of a belief can change it. When you notice a cause-effect relationship getting in your way, own it! Then manipulate it using the exercises above – and rewrite it to suit your present situation and environment.

The Work of Byron Katie – Perhaps the best and simplest way I know to challenge your cause-effect relationships and do something postive about them. I highly recommend her material – especially the The Work Worksheet. Google “The Work” or click here for more information on The Work of Byron Katie.

Rapid Eye Technology – The RET Skills for Life course can help you turn your cause-effect relationships around. Check out RET here. Click here to check out their free Skills for Life course.