When you see yourself as being at the effect of some cause over which you have little or no control, you feel helpless. In effect, you actually become helpless, because whatever you believe tends to manifest in reality. When you see yourself as being at effect, you automatically filter out all the possible ways you could create something different, and all the ways you have personal power. You do not see them at all. They disappear from your awareness, as if they did not exist at all.

Those who think they are at effect look outside of themselves for some cause on which to blame what is happening. When you do that, such a cause will ALWAYS appear, even it isn’t really the cause. The result is that you feel helpless, and ARE helpless.

I’ve often spoken about three goals I believe pretty much all people have: to be happy, to be peaceful inside, and to be successful in the world. If I were to pick one term to encapsulate what I mean by all three of these, it would be that all humans wish to thrive. This series of articles, in large part, is about how to thrive. But instead of looking at the fine details, as we have when looking at your Internal Map of Reality, we’re going to look more at general principles. If you follow these principles, you’ll have the ingredients that will allow you to thrive in this life.