After completing my NLP training recently, one of the basic presuppositions that really appealed to me was thinking about whether you are at cause or effect. What do I mean by this and what’s the relevance to growing your business?

Well, when you think about your life, do things ‘happen’ to you or do you ‘happen’ to them? Do you feel the recession is damaging the number of clients you’re bringing into your business right now, or do you consider how you can take the circumstances surrounding you and use them to grow your business, to see this as an opportunity, to see what you can do to create opportunity?

And I’m not talking here about ‘positive psychology’ and looking for the silver lining, but about taking responsibility for what happens to you and working out how to cause the results you want in your life and business. Let me give you another example. You read a book about using social media to grow your business. It’s full of great ideas, you get all inspired. You get busy, and six months later you still haven’t set up that Twitter account. If you’re at effect, you’ll find yourself saying “That book didn’t work for me” or ” I didn’t get a chance to implement it because I was just too busy”.

A key clue you’re at effect: you hear yourself saying “I can’t have that because……” (followed by the thing you’re at effect of). So what I’m asking you to do is just shift your mindset to think of yourself as being at cause. Look around you at the people who are succeeding with their businesses and notice how they don’t just get lucky, they create their business success -they are completely at cause.

If you were on the Six Weeks To Launch call on Tuesday and you’re saying to yourself “I can’t create a new product now because it’s the school summer holidays and my kids are at home”, you’re at effect. How can you take responsibility for getting the results you want and cause the school holidays NOT to be a problem?

Post your thoughts below….