I was chatting to a friend recently, and he is always talking about the things he is doing to improve himself. Sometimes what he mentions sounds totally weird, but many times what he mentions is totally Brilliant.

This time he mentioned this idea of “Be the cause, and not the effect”. This completely resonated with me.

I love the way that phrase sounds. It’s worthy of being a tattoo!

The Effect

So many of us let the world happen to us. We’re passive participants in the progression of history.

We get swept along with the current of time. This is what it means to be the effect. You are the effect of something else happening – things happen to you.

Going Vegan highlighted to me just how much I had been guilty of this.

I’m a South African Indian, and part of being South African, is biltong, braaivleis and chesa nymanas. Our culture is so heavily infused with meat, that you never stop consider if you should consume it. We eat it just because this is the environment we grew up in.

I suspect that 95% of our actions are on autopilot because society has molded us that way.

We just do what everyone else does. We don’t question it.

Veganism has taught me to question everything! And through this process, you realize that we’ve been swept along in the stream.

Then the question becomes “what can I do about it?”

The Cause

Being the Cause means taking actions based on where you are and where you want to be.

You don’t like society giving you a pittance of an income, then study how the financial system works, and then build your wealth. You don’t vibe with your the people around you, then drop the haters and find your tribe. You don’t like the way the world is cruel, then learn about kindness and act accordingly.

Be the Cause of things.

A major part of being the Cause, is deeply learning how the world works. After finishing my degree I decided to read a real world economics to see how much more interesting it would be over my textbooks. To my horror, I noticed that it just spouted the exact same information – it was rhetoric and dogma. Every mainstream contemporary book on economics was the same old narrative.

Then the 2008 Global Financial Crisis hit, and it hit hard. All the economics knowledge I had was rendered useless.

After that. I read outlier books on Economics and Money. I read books by Soros, Stiglitz, Klein, Rickards, Fienstein and others – and boy was it an education.

To date I’ve read loads of books and that knowledge has formed the basis of achieving my goals. That was the Cause!

When we understand the world, then we can act on it.

Conclusion

Be the Cause, not the Effect.

Simple words, but quite profound once you delve into it. Intense study of the world will reveal our place here, illuminate how we are the effect. Once that its highlighted to us, we are free to be the cause.

Be the Cause and you will have a Cause.

Photo by Chris Curry on Unsplash