So I had an interview today about my next project, which is tentatively called the 12 laws, and I was asked a question that I get asked every time I talk to people and I just realized it.

“Why do you think most people never get what they want?”

My answer, “because most people never decide on what they want, and if they do decide, they never expect to get it.”

This goes back to a chapter Think Free Be Free called the power of “until” and “keep”. But even deeper than that; this goes to the heart of the fact that most people believe they have no real control over their lives on a metaphysical level. In this blog I will outline briefly what I call the happiness road to achievement .

Step 1: Decide What You Want

Most people never make up their minds about what they want. When I say make up their minds I mean that they never sit down and really figure out what they want out of life and lock in on that idea. They never have a focus for their lives, they just kind of blow with the wind. They are a seeds following the winds of trends. They are never rooted in anything, the only reference they have to base their decisions on are the opinions of the outside world.

When you make up your mind about what you want you become rooted. You become a realist in the sense that you allow the gravity of your current situation to root you into the soil. There the wind cannot affect you, and the storms that come in your life serve to nurture and strengthen you. You have a reference point for your decisions since you can clearly see how far you are away from you the thing you want, and you begin to grow into something worthy and deserving of that thing.

Making up your mind about what you want and holding on to that idea for longer than 5 minutes is the first part getting what you want. If you never make up your mind about what you want, you never give yourself a chance to get anything or to grow to become anything. You become by default, that maybe a good thing or a bad thing depending on what you become.

Step 2: Expect What You Want

Years of mental oppression has caused us all to become so familiar with it that we don’t even realize it, we teach it to our kids under the guise of the way of the world, and those that accept it are called wise and labeled as realist and great teachers. What am I getting at with the previous sentence; I’m talking about the phrase “plan for the best expect the worse,” and his cousin “anything that can go wrong will go wrong.” What a sad day it is when someone that expects the best is labeled as aloof and childish, ignorant and naive, in extreme cases they are labeled as cocky and arrogant. Most people never get this far with a dream because they never decide on what they want, but even the ones that do eventually get stuck write here when they begin to expect the exact opposite of what they want to happen.

We call it “calling things into existence” in spiritual circles, but most people don’t realize that speaking about it isn’t calling it necessarily, but expecting it most definitely is. Expect the best out of life and have faith in your ability to handle anything less than that if it arises. If you spend all your time planning for and expect worst case scenarios you are truly missing out on the beauty and majesty of the world around you. You aren’t even giving yourself a chance to acknowledge the good things that are occurring, and you aren’t giving the good the same chance to happen as you are giving the bad since we naturally devote more time to what we expect to happen. This means living in a constant negative state and inviting all the negative emotions that come with them.

It’s not enough to decide what you want, but you also have to expect what you want and believe in your heart that it’s already yours and you are just waiting for it to manifest. Kind of like a letter in the mail, you know it’s there you are just waiting for it to show up, you are expecting it.

Step 3: Receive What You Want

This last part is something that should line up for you automatically if you are doing the first 2 steps correctly. But it does require a fair amount of resilience and faith , a crazy amount of endurance and strength, and a good understand and sense of self awareness. Most people never ever get here, and when they do they miss the package because it isn’t in any envelope that they have ever seen before. They aren’t in tuned with the world around them, or more importantly the world within them. So they go on expect until they just give up not realizing that their thing has been presented to them numerous times over but because they were not in a place to receive it they didn’t get it.

Receiving is sometimes called releasing which means you release your hold on the object of your attention. You still expect it but you don’t dwell on it, partly because in a practical sense that makes time go slower and will cause you to give up before it is time to receive. Think about a time when you were trying to remember something, or maybe you lost something. The time you spent looking or thinking about it, you couldn’t find it. The moment you said okay, it will turn up eventually and released it, you turned over a pillow and there it was, or it just popped in your head in the middle of the night. The same rules apply to the tangible things that you want.

Realize that it will take some time to manifest but understand that time is a measure of distance, and there is distance between you and what you want. But you have to make a decision first. Most people are so indecisive about decisions because they haven’t made up their minds about what they want. They struggle with expecting it because they don’t believe they are worth it. Then they struggle with receiving it because they haven’t worked on developing themselves enough and getting in the proper position to receive it.

This is just a quick overview of the process, there are lots of steps encompassed in each one of these three, but if you follow these three I can assure you your days will be brighter and happier. I am speaking from experience here, I have manifested amazing things in my life, and I have seen how quickly they depart when you fall out of harmony and into chaos and indecision.

Author's Bio: 

Patrick Irvine is Author of the Think Free Be Free Audio Program. He has been actively traveling, sharing, and educating on the power of a positive attitude and perspective for over 3 years now. He is also a Black Belt in Lean Six Sigma and has helped turn around several organizations as a consultant. During his own time spent employed in the civilian world after his time in the military, he oversaw over 20 different major operations, supervised over 200 different people, and managed the movement of over 300 million dollars in products and services. His home site is www.thinkfreebefree.com