The 90/10 Principle!

The 90/10 Principle

A lot of what happens to us in life, we have no control over. In fact philanthropists call this the 90/10 principle. In other words, 90% of what ‘happens’ to us we can’t control.

 We cannot control what life throws at us. For example, we can be the best drivers on the planet, but that cannot guarantee that another driver will not ‘cut us up’ on the road. We can be the best employee in the world, but that cannot prevent the company we work for going into liquidation and throwing us out of work. We can be the most polite, well-mannered person in town, but that won’t necessarily stop some bozo being rude to us.

That is the 90% of the Principle I’m talking about; we cannot control what happens to us.

 The good news is we can always control the 10% if we choose to do so! And what is this 10%?

We are in complete control of the 10% by choosing to respond to life’s events rather than react to them.

This is the 90/10 principle in working mode; Cause> Reaction> Event

Please let me illustrate the principle using a bozo driving a car, which I’m sure we all have had experience of, at some time or another!

You are driving home from work and someone cuts you up on the road and pulls in front of you after you have been patiently waiting. (Cause and you have no control over)

You can react to this by hooting your horn and gesturing to the other driver with as many fingers as you feel are appropriate, at how wrong he is. This in turn will more than likely cause the other driver to get angrier at you and who knows what could escalate from there. Meanwhile your blood pressure is rising and adding to the stress of your journey home. (Event)

The ‘reaction’ is always emotional. It’s that initial grrrr! You know the response, I mean. Like when you open an email that incenses you and you feel like writing back immediately and giving the sender a good piece of your mind via your expertly crafted literary skills. (You should apply this principle to those too!)

So let’s view this example again using the 90/10 principle and a new formula.

Cause>Reaction>Choice> Action Response>Event

Unless you are like Mother Theresa or have been locked in a Monastery studying transcendental meditation for the past 20 years, there will always be a ‘reaction’ to things that are thrown at us.

What we need to do is to interrupt the pattern right after the ‘cause’. We do this by biting our lip, keeping quiet and not doing anything. Instead, take a deep breath or two and count to ten.

You can try asking yourself this question, ‘Do I want to feed and grow my reaction or choose my response?’

(This is what Victor Frankl, the great Holocaust survivor and a guy with a brilliant attitude called, ‘the space between cause and effect’)

Now our example looks like this;

Cause: You are driving home from work and someone cuts you up on the road and pulls in front of you after you have been patiently waiting. (Cause and you have no control over)

Reaction: You BEGIN to raise your fist at the other driver, BUT you bite your lip, count to ten and take a couple of deep breaths.

(IT IS HERE THAT YOU INTERRUPT THE PATTERN BY INSERTING YOUR CHOICE!)

Choice: ‘I’ll say and do something positive, rather than hurling back abuse at the bozo driving his car at silly speeds and cutting everyone up’

Action Response: ‘Wow, that chap is in a hurry to get home. Maybe he has a sick child/relative/wife/partner that he needs to get home to or there could be any number of emergencies that are causing him to rush. When he looks in his rear view mirror I will give him a genuine smile.’

Event: Well, there is no following argument, no raised blood pressure or harmful stress applied to your body. You remain at peace. Better still, you arrive at home calm which leads to greater harmony with your wife/partner and family simply because you are not annoyed.

A wise man once said, “Nothing has any meaning other than the meaning you want to give it” (It may have been Confucius)

Now that might take some thinking and be a little harder to apply than what your initial reaction would be. But it’s well worth it.

Take the bozo driving like a maniac...has he hurt you? No. Has he offended you? No. Are you less of a person, just because he has cut in front of you? No.

My question to you is, which way will serve you best?