We have so many different goals and desires. Some of us want to build a successful, thriving career. Some of us dream about meeting that special person, falling in love and spending your whole life together. Some of us want to remain young, healthy and full of energy. Some of us want to make tons of money and never worry about paying bills or having to work two jobs again. Some of us would like to drive a new shiny black Ferrari and feel cool. And some of us, like my 3-year-old niece, just want to have a stuffed pink dog with white fluffy ears.

What do I want? Many different things (including lots of money and a stuffed pink dog ).

But, I guess, the biggest dream I had for the longest time was to buy a summer house somewhere on the beach. You know, a white one, with huge windows that face the sea, with a spacious patio on the first floor and a cozy fireplace that would keep me and my family warm during rainy evenings.

There are so many wonderful things about having a beach house. You could wake up early in morning, stroll barefoot along the beach, breathe the fresh salty air, and feel warm sand under your feet. You could invite friends over for a cook out, grill meat on the patio, drink wine and laugh together. You could admire a breathtaking sunset while holding hands with the person you love. A lovely dream, isn’t it?

Well, I had this goal for over two years. I could picture it in my mind in the smallest detail, and yet nothing happened. The Law of Attraction was not working! I kept hoping and visualizing, working and waiting, but no matter how much I tried, I was not moving any closer to my desire.

Do you know what I am talking about? You try and fail, try again, but nothing seems to change and after some time you start wondering what you are doing wrong.

Of course, there could be hundreds of different reasons, why we fail to achieve our goals, starting from lack of motivation, lack of money, lack of persistence, to lack of self-discipline or lack of time… In general, anything that starts with a word “lack” could serve as a plausible excuse for our misfortunes and failures. But I do not think the true reason is the lack of anything.

I believe that often we do not get what we want, because we are not ready to receive it. I know it may sound weird, but hear me out.

Whenever we start blaming our inability to achieve the goal that we want on lack of something, we are simply shifting responsibility to external factors that are outside of our control. “God’s punishment”, “bad karma”, “terrible character”, “genetics” – all of these phrases have one thing in common – we can not do anything about them. And, therefore, it is not our fault.

In my case, I realized that I only wanted to have all the good parts of having a beach house, and none of the troubles. When I looked deep down inside myself I realized that I am simply not ready to accept the responsibilities that come hand in hand with my goal. I do not want to fix the roof if it starts leaking. I do not want to sweep the floor twice a day, because there is sand all over the place. I do not want to worry about robbers and floods. I do not want to decide whether I want to rent the house, while I am not living in it or just keep it closed for nine months a year. And I, definitely, had never pictured myself staying locked up in the house if it rained for a week.

Of course, you may think that I am saying all this just to make myself feel better about the goal that I have not accomplished or to rationalize my failures. And maybe, you are right. Maybe on some subconscious level I am doing just that. But I do not think so. I believe that desire is not something that we wish to have just for the heck of having it.

Desire is responsibility. And in most cases we can attain our goal only when we are ready to accept full responsibility for it, as well as all the ‘after effects’ of it.

It is like having a child. When you are ready for it, you just know. And you realize it is not going to be easy and that you will have to deal with diapers, burps and many-many sleepless nights, but you still want it, because all these things stop to matter the second your baby looks up at you and gives you a huge smile. That is how you know that you are ready to accept responsibility and truly enjoy it.

Now go ahead and take a look at the goal that you have been trying to achieve for a long time? What are the responsibilities that come along with it? Are you mentally prepared to face all the challenges that your might encounter after accomplishing what you wanted? Are you sure?

If your answer is “yes!” than I have no doubt that you will get whatever you have set your mind on. But if whenever you think about your goal, deep down you feel that strange resistance or that it might not be what you truly want, then I suggest you let go of this goal and direct your energy into something that will bring you a lot more satisfaction in the long run.

They say, “Be careful what you wish for”, because if you keep insisting, you just might get it…

We all pay an outrages price for the ‘luxury’ of negativity. It often costs us our career, success, relationships, self-esteem and our health. However, usually it is not negativity per se, that has such a destructive effect on our life. It is our reaction to it.

Here is a quick example:

Your co-worker makes a stupid joke about the way your hair looks today. What do you do? If you are having a good day, you would most likely ignore this comment, make a polite smile or joke back. But it would not bother you one little bit.

Now let us say that you have an important meeting today. You have spent at least 10 minutes in front of the mirror trying to tame that lively lock that just refused to stay in place. When you walked out of the house it was raining and, of course, because of the rain the traffic was terrible. As a result you were 25 minutes late for work and your boss was not happy about it. How would you react to the comment about your hair in this case? You would not be laughing. And neither would be your co-worker, because you would most likely vent off your anger on him.

So why is it that sometimes we exercise good self-control and handle situations wisely and sometimes we react without thinking and regret our actions afterwards?

Our actions do not depend solely on stimuli that we encounter (by stimuli I mean people or events), but on many different factors that include our physical state, our emotional resilience to stress and negativity, our beliefs, our past experiences and the choices that we make.

It might seem that we have no control over people or events that we are faced with in our life, but this is only partly true. We make conscious choices about our lifestyle, our professions, companies that we work for and people we hang out with. All this will largely determine the people and situations that we encounter and our reactions to them.

Let me explain this. If I work at a job that I absolutely can not stand, if my boss is a total jerk, who never misses an opportunity to point out my shortcomings and belittles me in front of other employees, if I regularly have to stay after work to get everything done, and still I feel that I can not afford anything ‘extra’ with the money that I make – then I obviously have to deal with too many negative stimuli.

BUT!

It was MY CHOICE to stay at the job that is unsatisfying and low paid. It is MY CHOICE to continue to hate my boss and argue with him. It is MY CHOICE to sacrifice my personal time in order to meet unrealistic deadlines.

In any given negative situation we always have two choices: we can either respond proactively, by analyzing the current situation and choosing the best course of action or we can react impulsively by yelling and kicking the object of our distress.

Remember that the choice is ALWAYS yours!