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You may have thought you would never find yourself in this position, but here you stand. A little befuddled, a little depressed, wondering if you’re wasting your life. You might be working sixty hours a week at a job that pays too little and asks for too much. You may be staying in a relationship that looks like it’s going nowhere fast. You may be chasing after your dreams while they get further and further away. How do you know when to call it quits? How do you know when it’s finally time to throw in the towel and call the whole thing off?

If you’ve ever wondered whether or life is passing you by, it probably is. If you had to ask, it’s flying by as we speak. Happy people, content people, passionate people, they don’t ask that question. It’s like being in love. How do you know when you’re in love? You just know. How do you know you’re unsatisfied? You just know . . . if you’re honest with yourself. And most people are honest with themselves, except when it comes to their failures, then they turn to self delusion.

I’m not talking about little delusions like “this dress still fits,” or “the comb-over works.” Self delusion on the scale I’m describing is when you say that your ten year relationship still works, though you can’t stand the sight of each other anymore. You tell yourself you like your job when you couldn’t hate your boss more if you tried. That is serious self delusion and it is always a sign that you are wasting your life on a daily basis.

Here is the test for telling whether or not you fit this category. Do you go to bed every night excited for the coming morning, dreading it, or utterly indifferent? If your answer was indifference, dread, or “I don’t know,” your life is leaving without you.

Now what are you going to do about it?

Like any addiction, you first have to admit that you have a problem and, yes, it is an addiction. If you qualify for the above categories, you are addicted to something that it wasting your life. Now you must find out what that is and put a stop to it now and forever.

It may seem as if these things are happening to you instead of being brought on by you, but you are always the cause of these addictions. It’s easy to argue that you don’t cause random accidents, but every day that you wake up and walk into a job you hate you are giving life permission to be miserable. Every day that you stay in that stale or unhealthy relationship is a day that you create your own misery. These moments are you choosing to be unhappy.

And you are addicted to this unhappiness. I know it may not seem that way, but when you go to work, you are getting your fix. When you stay with that un-significant other, you are reaffirming your unhappiness. Why? Because you feel unhappy and need a reason to stay that way. It’s a vicious cycle if ever there was one. Our unhappiness leads to blame and complaining and self pity which feel good. We like these things and we want to continue doing them so we must continue to be unhappy.

Admit this to yourself and internalize this knowledge now because it will speed your recovery greatly if you do. Deny it now and you’ll postpone a change you may desperately need. Admit your addiction, but by all means DON’T fight against it. The addiction is a creation of the mind and fighting the mind never works. It can be like quicksand dragging you down, the more you fight the harder it gets. You cannot fight against yourself, you must work with yourself.

The more you struggle and moan about your problems the more power you give them. If you catch yourself in this mindset, STOP. Stop everything you’re doing and take a deep breath. Break the thought process and the flow of energy that is building up to an unhappy crescendo and your mind will have to start over. If you can be vigilant enough to catch yourself every time it happens, you will break the habit of sinking in the quicksand. This is the same method used to break animals of bad habits. Your cat starts scratching the drapes, you squirt it with water. It isn’t so much a punishment as it is a redirection of the animal’s focus away from their habitual behavior. This is what you want to do with yourself.

Depression

There is something you need to get straight if you find yourself unhappy or dissatisfied: it is occurring for a reason. Your mind, your body and the Universe never do anything without a reason. If you are suffering from depression, there’s a reason: your life sucks.

Science has never been able to pin down the true cause of depression, despite many successful treatments, and I believe it is because they have overlooked the most obvious reasons. They looked at serotonin levels in the brain, but that is only a symptom. They examined chemical imbalances, but they found nothing conclusive. They neglected, however, to test whether or not people who suffer from depression do so for a good reason. They didn’t examine their living conditions.

Do you ever see people who are in their dream jobs, are financially abundant and have many friends suffering from depression? No. The simple reason is that they have no reason to. If you are unhappy, there is a reason. Now you must discover that reason and put a stop to it.

Honesty

If you want to change your life, now or in the future, you must start being honest with yourself. Dishonesty with one’s self is how these addictions begin. It’s when you lie to yourself and say that complaining feels good, or the situation warrants it, that you continue a self destructive pattern. That pattern is the reason you are wasting your life. It is the reason you are unhappy and the reason you are going to remain that way.

Break the habit. Break the pattern. Have a happy life.

All it takes is a little bit of honesty and a lot of courage. You have to be willing to stand up and tell yourself and anyone who asks that you no longer like your job. That what you have been working toward has been a waste. That your spouse is not the one for you. It takes untold amounts of courage. People all around the world want to do just this but they don’t and it isn’t for a lack of desire. They want to change their lives and they have the courage to do so, but they cannot bring themselves to admit they’ve wasted time.

If you have ever wondered why people stay in unhealthy relationships for too long, this is one of the reasons.

We don’t want to admit our mistakes because they may be mistakes that have lasted for years and we can’t admit throwing away that much time. You don’t want to say that your job is a dead end because ten years is a long time to spend on a dead end. You don’t want to admit that your marriage is a failure because it would mean all those years together were failures as well. You want to feel as if all that time meant something; that you might get a return on your investment.

The truth is that you won’t and if you don’t realize it now, you will only end up wasting more time. More years will pass and then you will realize that you have wasted twenty instead of ten. Many people put off making these kinds of decisions because they feel they might make them in haste. They say things like, “well I’ve only worked here for a year, maybe if I stay another year it will get better.” It hardly ever gets better.

You are a smart person. You know when the situation you are in is not the right one for you. Now you must admit it.

Never mistake the truth that you are in control of your life. No matter what you may think of the law of attraction and the role that intention plays in the quantum physics of the universe, it is impossible to believe that we are not in full control of ourselves. Or should I say that we CAN be in full control of ourselves. Most choose not to be, saying that their mind goes where it wants and they simply are what they are. They excuse themselves from being in control by creating habits and personality traits that they set beyond and outside of themselves. They identify themselves based on these traits and internalize them as if they were law, never realizing that they are the creators of all their attributes, good and bad.

They identify themselves as stupid, or clumsy. They become a person who is bad at managing their finances, or a person who is socially inept. They strip these attributes of their descriptive powers and wear them like a name tag. “Hello, I’m Person-Who-Gets-Nervous-In-Crowds, what are you?”

Never in the history of the universe was there a dolling out of personality traits. No god dealt you a hand to play saying, “Ah, you got the smart card, good for you but, too bad, Old Sport, looks like you got the clumsy card as well! Bad luck! Well, watch those stairs on your way out!” There wasn’t a sorting ceremony before you came to earth where you were put into the “bad with numbers” house. The attributes that you put on yourself are your creations, your labels and therefore, completely under your command. Believing otherwise is one of the greatest misconceptions of humanity.

When you let any one part of you take on a mind of its own, you are asking for trouble in your life. We’ve talked before about the manifestations that can result when the ego takes control of you, but the rule applies to any part of you. When you let your “clumsiness” take over, you will undoubtedly fulfill your own clumsy prophecy. When you let “moodiness” take over, you will not be happy or very well liked. These are not you and they never have been. They are creations, fabrications of you and the world around you.

Perhaps you think you are clumsy because you were always told that this was so. Your clumsiness only manifests because you internalize it and take it on as an identity. It is not an identity and it certainly isn’t your identity. Whatever you are now, you are choosing to be. Whatever you want to be will also be a choice.

If you are unhappy with yourself, remind yourself that everything you are unhappy with is a creation of your own pure mind, as is the unhappiness you feel. You’ve invented them all.

I understand that this may be hard to digest for many people who have never viewed their world from this perspective before. Right now it may feel as if I am blaming you for your short comings, but I ask you not to view it from such a short-sighted stance. What you have been is of no concern to you right now. The past is gone and cannot be brought back. It is what you choose to be now that is important. I am not blaming you, I am trying to empower you. Imagine what you could do right now if you would only internalize this knowledge.

Could you do something practical like, say, stop smoking? If you have long internalized the identity of a smoker, could you turn it around with a thought?

Could you become less negative and judgmental simply by letting go your self-created identity as a negative person?

This knowledge doesn’t diminish you in the least. On the contrary, it bolsters you, it makes you greater, perhaps, than you have ever made yourself!

Remember that “all things in moderation” applies just as well in the mental realm of thoughts and feelings as it does in the physical world of manifestation. Just as too much of anything can harm your body, so too much of any attribute can harm your consciousness. Fear can grip you when the ego is allowed to rule over you and anger can grow from internalized insecurities. These attributes should be tools at your disposal, not processes operating without your consent. Think of them, not as uncontrollable forces, but as you would brushes to paint with. You can fill your canvas with poise, grace and confidence or with fear, anger and resentment, all through choice.

They are not done unto you. They do not make you up. They are not you. They are tools that will always and forever be your creations to use as you see fit. If you can internalize this, you can be born anew, happier, healthier and in full control of your own resources.