USK Karate Academy's Technical Tip Series - Basic Form 1

E+R=O Event + Response = Outcome

By Master Instructor David Alvas, Director

Patrick and Rose Sheehan, two of my most senior adult students, shared this with me. It’s by Jack Canfield, author of the Chicken Soup for the Soul Series. Enjoy!

“The basic idea is that every outcome you experience in life (whether it is success or failure, wealth or poverty, health or illness, intimacy or estrangement, joy or frustration) is the result of how you have responded to an earlier event or events in your life.

If you don’t like the outcomes you are currently getting, there are two basic choices you can make.

1. You can blame the event (E) for your lack of results (O). In other words, you can blame the economy, the weather, the lack of money, your lack of education, racism, gender bias, the current administration in Washington, your wife or husband, your boss’ attitude, the lack of support, the political climate, the system of lack of systems, and so on. If you’re a golfer, you’ve probably even blamed your clubs and the course you played on. No doubt all these factors do exist, but if they were the deciding factor, nobody would ever succeed.

Jackie Robinson would never have played major league baseball, Sidney Poitier and Denzel Washington would have never become movie stars, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer would never have become U.S. Senators, Erin Brockovich would never have uncovered PG&E’s contamination of the water in Hinkley, California, Bill Gates would never have founded Microsoft and Steve Jobes would never have started Apple Computers. For every reason why it’s not possible, there are hundreds of people who have faced the same circumstances and succeeded.

Lots of people overcome these so-called limiting factors, so it can’t be the limiting factors that limit you. It’s not the external conditions and circumstances that stop you- it’s you! We stop ourselves! We think limiting thoughts and engage in self-defeating behaviors. We defend our self-destructive habits (such as drinking and smoking) with indefensible logic. We ignore useful feedback, fail to continuously educate ourselves and learn new skills, waste time on the trivial aspects of our lives, engage in idle gossip, eat unhealthy food, fail to exercise, spend more money than we make, fail to invest in our future, avoid necessary conflict, fail to tell the truth, don’t ask for what we want-then wonder why our lives don’t work. But this, by the way, is what most people do. They place the blame for everything that isn’t the way they want it on outside events and circumstances. They have an excuse for everything.

2. You can instead simply change your responses (R) to the events (E)-the way things are-until you get the outcomes (O) you want.

You can change your thinking, change your communication, change the pictures you hold in your head (your images of yourself and the world)-and you can change your behavior-the things you do. That is all you really have control over anyway. Unfortunately, most of us are so run by our habits that we never change our behavior. We get stuck in our conditioned responses-to our spouses and our children, to our colleagues at work, to our customers and our clients, to our students, and to the world at large. We are a bundle of conditioned reflexes that operate outside of our control. You have to regain control of your thoughts, your images, your dreams and daydreams, and your behavior.

Everything you think, say and do needs to become intentional and aligned with your purpose, your values, and your goals.”

Have a great week tweaking your success formula!

All the best,

David Alvas