Step 2 of EP7 – Personal Assessment

The Empowerment Principle of Causality

If you look up “causality” in the dictionary, it is a rather simple statement which simply describes it to mean “every effect has a cause”. But the reality is that the Empowerment Principle of Causality is far more complex than what we think because determining the root cause is the most important part of the Principle of Causality, and it is what determines how you interpret your environment and why you experience life as you do.

“How you interpret your environment is based on your beliefs. You are always living what you believe about life and yourself” – Extract from the EP7 Step 2 Workbook

I immediately thought of the glass half full and half empty syndrome whereby two people from the same environment, looking at the same glass can interpret it in two very different ways:

One would be so grateful that his/her glass is still half full despite the difficult environment that we are currently living in;

The other one, resentful and unhappy with the fact that no matter what he/she does the glass remains desperately half empty, despite all efforts made to make it full.

Our Adaptation Skills

Our brain is designed to disconnect and reconnect with new thoughts and beliefs if we give it permission to do so. But there are reasons why we are unable to adapt, and it is important to recognize what they are. We cannot adapt when we are in denial, feel victimized, blaming others and not taking ownership of who we are. It reminded me of the time when I was trying to recover from my spine surgery and went through a dark time of fear and depression, (Chapter 2 “Power of Mental Health”) worrying if I made the right decision and whether I was ever going to recover fully from my surgery. When I eventually managed to move out of this negative space, my recovery was fast, as I felt the power of my mental state and the effect it had on my body.

Your power is switched on the moment you realise that you are the master that can change the outcome of your own circumstances”

Being the Observer

I managed to get out of this negative space by first coming across a book by Robin Sharma, and there was a one-line quote which still resonates with me today:

“The best antidote to fear is knowledge”

Having knowledge on what created my fear and understanding how it affected me, was my first step to recovery. As part of the process of understanding how fear ruled my life, I also started meditating. As I mentioned before, meditation was very hard for me at the beginning, but what I managed to achieve out of the meditation process was priceless! In the calm, detached state that meditation brings, I was able to ‘see’ and ‘observe’ my behavior and state of mind in a calm manner with no judgement. I became what we call in Step 2 of EP7, the “Observer”.

Being able to detach myself from the current version of who I was, was like having a pair of blinkers that was removed from my eyes

I could see clearly where my flaws were, where I went wrong and most importantly, I came to understand the reasons why, and did so without any judgement, being frustrated or angry, just acceptance.

Photo by Fransiskus Filbert Mangundap on Unsplash

The Personal Assessment Process

The Personal Assessment Exercise of Step 2 of EP7 is all about just that! It consists of a structured methodology of going through the process of finding who you really are, by focusing on key circumstances in your current life, and deconstructing them to reveal the beliefs and principles that you live by, thus causing you to think, feel and act the way you do. Now that is the power of knowledge at work!

The conclusions that are revealed after going through the personal assessment process are there to guide you to understand who you are and are the trigger for the journey of moving from an old version to a new version of you. The Personal Assessment Process is twofold: an Empowerment Process which reveals how you feel when you are at your best, and a Disempowerment one when you are at your worst. I could not help thinking while I was doing the Personal Assessment Process how handy a tool it would have been for me if I would have done the Disempowerment Personal Assessment while recovering from my spine surgery!

Podcast Announcement

I will soon be broadcasting my podcast with George Helou, EP7 Coaching Academy Founder. Watch this space as we go through Step 2 and talk about the Personal Assessment Process in our podcast!