Removing Roadblocks to the Life You Want, Part One

One of the things I have noticed in listening to people talk about their lives is that most people don't know what they really want. They may list obvious things like good health and being rich, but when it gets down to it, they don't have a clue what they really want to do with their lives.  They may complain about their job or their spouse or a myriad of other things about their life they don't like, but they can't offer alternatives to what they have because they cannot really conceive of their lives as being different than they are right now. They are stuck and the more they complain about what they don't like about their lives, the more stuck they become, and the more they draw the same reality to their daily lives.  If you are one of those people out there yearning for something more than what you have, externally or internally, then it's time to take stock of what you are doing to keep yourself stuck in this place you claim you don't want to be.

The first thing we all need to do is to change our lives for the better is to stop complaining about the things we don't like about them. The more we complain about our problems, the more we cause them to grow.  One of the accepted spiritual principles at work in the universe is that whatever we focus our attention on will expand.  This is the universal principle that activates the "Law of Attraction" we have heard so much about in recent years.  Our complaints are like a spotlight, focusing the law of attraction onto all the negative things in our lives.  This focused attention screams out to the universe, "Bring me more of THIS thing, which I do not like!"

Do you have more bills than you have money?  Then the first thing you need to do to change this is to stop complaining about the bills.  Do you feel as though you never have enough time in your day?  Is every minute filled to capacity with things you must do and places you must go?  Then stop complaining about it because you are making it worse.  Does your spouse do absolutely everything wrong or perhaps does nothing at all?  Then stop complaining about it.  That's step number one.  We need to close the door of our mouths and lock them as far as complaining goes.  Every time you start to complain, clamp your hand over your mouth literally to stop yourself from uttering another complaint.

Author Will Bowen has penned a book entitled A Complaint-free World.  In his book, he challenges his readers to commit to living complaint-free for twenty-one days.  It is generally accepted that it takes twenty-one days to establish or break a habit.  So if you can go that long without complaining, you can conceivably break the complaining habit.  With the approach of the new year, I challenge you to do this.  Commit to yourself to live without complaining for the first twenty-one days of the new year.  Of course you can start any time, and you may have to start over again if at first you don't succeed.  I'm planning to focus on this more in my life again, because I need to be reminded of this truth too.  If we persist in this endeavor, I think we'll find that not only will we stop complaining, but we will also change the dynamics of our social and familial relationships.  Negativity begets negativity.  If we don't start it, and we don't join in if someone else starts it, then we are changing the patterns in our lives and in our relationships.  All the energy we used to put into complaining can be directed elsewhere, preferably into something positive.  We'll talk more about the positive replacements in the blogs to follow.

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