There's this famous saying in management that goes like this, "You are perfectly aligned to get the results you are getting". This basically means that your current state is a natural and inevitable outcome of your previous decisions and circumstances. In other words, it couldn't have happened in any other way. For it be any different, the precursors would have to have been different. This saying addresses organizations mainly, but also applies to individuals.
This is similar to the concept that negative outcomes stemming from what we do are merely consequences of our actions and shouldn't be viewed as bad, but rather natural (when you pick up on end of a stick, you pick up the other); you should not be surprised.
Additionally, Covey promotes a similar idea which deals with the events that we don't have influence on, like our daughter spilling coffee on our clothes. He says that only 10% of the negative results that happen from these events are linked to the event itself; the other 90% of the results are from our response to that event (your daughter didn't fail the exam that morning because she spilt the coffee, she failed because you scolded her and couldn't think properly on the test as a result).
What this boils down to is that the majority of results in our lives are directly linked to our actions and reactions; how we act to get the results we want, and how we react to things we have no power over and can't change.
The results that we get in life are natural outcomes of our actions and reactions. The implications of this simple concept are profound. The profoundness doesn't stem from its inherent complexity, but from the fact that it shatters the artificial complexity that we bestow on life to justify our actions and reactions.
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