What's the one thing that cannot be taken away from you?

I had a too-brief-but-no-less-motivational-than-usual conversation with the CEO of Just Global , Brandon Friesen (he/him) , yesterday. He talked about a social post he’d seen in which a discussion took place between two people, one of whom was lamenting all the terrible things that are happening in the world and one of whom was talking about all of the things she was curious, passionate, and excited about in her world.

It got me thinking. And it got me remembering.

Each of us is a victim of, subject to, or a perpetrator within systems of oppression and minoritization. There are terrible things happening around the globe, including war, conflict, disease, poverty, and famine. Extreme weather and, dare I say it, climate change are crippling transport systems, taking lives, and destroying natural habitats. There are things probably happening in your personal life and your professional life, that you wish hadn't happened, that you wish weren't happening, or that you hope are not going to happen.

There is an imagined future that we can worry about, be anxious about, or be stressed about and there are aspects of our past that we can be angry, sad, or depressed about.?

And the simple fact remains, in amongst all of this, that right here and right now this is the place where we can choose how to respond to what has happened, what is happening, or what might happen.

We don't have to subject ourselves to 'either-or' thinking or the thought that "I will be happy when ...". We can opt instead for 'both-and' thinking, a process in which multiple realities can be true. With both-and thinking, we can acknowledge that things aren't always as we would like them and still feel good about what we do, who we are, and what we have in life.

As I wrote about in Leadership is a Behavior Not a Title , one of our most-evolved attributes is our ability to experience events and make meaning from them. We are making meaning all the time; it’s something we can’t not do. We are meaning-making machines.?

This applies across all experiences we have. To make sense of them and accommodate these experiences into our model of the world, we have to create meaning. Meaning creates a feeling, and feelings are the glue of our memories.?

Furthermore, in a weird twist of self-sabotaging dark humor, we seem to have an unnerving habit of making bad-meaning over no-meaning. We seem to find it easy to fill any gaps in our meaning with bad stuff rather than good stuff. Let me try to explain why.?

We use a set of unconscious filters to construct our map of the world to make meaning out of our experience. Therefore, the meaning we make from situations—positive or negative—is directly linked to our state, physiology, and filters.

What we think, how we feel, and the subsequent meaning we make is a choice. It might sometimes be an unconscious choice, but it is still a choice. When we recognize this, all of a sudden we have power or, we are empowered. Empowered to choose differently.?

I am not talking about a cognitive heady reframe that “Everything's gonna be OK!”, like this:

No, I am talking about tapping into a deeper well and an embodied sense of okayness.?

For every stimulus, there is a response; for every cause, there is an effect. It’s an immutable law. We can think about this law in terms of an equation in which Cause is greater than Effect. And we can apply this equation to our lives and assume a position at either side of the equation.?

To the right of the equation, when we are at effect, we’ve given our power away. This is where we look to others as the reason for our situation, where we make excuses for not having done something, or for having done something we perhaps aren’t that proud of. It’s where we attribute the source of our experience to them or an other—the government, the weather, luck, and so on.?

To the left of the equation, when you are at cause, you’re empowered, and you take accountability. It is from here that you can take responsibility for generating who, what, and where you are at. No one can place you at cause; no one can bestow responsibility on you, and you cannot bestow it on anyone else.?

“The traffic made me late.” “This pen makes my hand-writing messy.” “They made me lose my cool.” These are all statements of effect. Try these more causal ways of expressing the same thing. “Sorry I’m late; I didn’t account for traffic when I planned my journey.” “I am not used to using this type of pen and find it challenging to write in my usual style.” “I realize I lost my cool for a moment. Something you said/did led me to recall an unpleasant memory.”?

In short, when you are at cause, you’re ready to own life. It’s where you hold yourself accountable and where you can say to yourself, “I am where I am and who I am today because of something I have done, or not done, in the past.”?

Viktor Frankl, a neurologist, psychologist, Holocaust survivor, and author of Man’s Search for Meaning, is believed by many to have once said, “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”?

While these words never actually appeared in any of Frankl’s works, they resonate deeply with me, and the points I am attempting to make here. With that said, sometimes the space between stimulus and response evades us. Sometimes it can be so infinitesimal that it doesn’t feel like a gap at all, and our response to a certain stimulus can feel like an impulse that we have no choice over.?

But what if you could linger in the space between cause and effect? What if you took a breath before responding? There is so much wisdom in the various sayings?designed to provide perspective, such as “Count to ten,” “Go for a walk around the block,” or “Why don’t you sleep on it?”?

You cannot change the facts of the past, but you can change how you feel about the facts of the past. You cannot will a different future into existence, but you can trust that you have survived 100% of your worst days so far, so why wouldn’t you going forward? The point of your power is right here and right now. In the space between stimulus and response.?

As I write this, I am taken back to my days of working in the Learning Department at Marks & Spence Plc when I was introduced to the Four Practices of the FISH Philosophy which was originated by the workers at Pike Place Fish Market in Seattle.?It is the 4th Practice that has particular relevance here. It reminds us that we can choose our attitudes and encourages you and me to, take responsibility for how we respond to what life throws at us. Your choice affects others. Ask yourself: “Is my attitude helping my team or my customers? Is it helping me to be the person I want to be?”

If any of what I said here resonates even in the slightest, I would encourage you to go and check out their work. It might just change your world. Or, at the very least, change the meaning you're making about the things happening in your world.