I see this more and more...an epidemic of people that hate their lives.

Many of us are stuck in looking at the aspects of our existence that we dislike.

We hate our jobs,  co-workers,  bills,  relationships,  neighbourhoods, government, clothes, weight, weather, hairdos, etc  You name it. Anything comes under fire.  Anything is fair game: the street person, the guy with the 13 weird facial piercings on the subway, the colour of your walls, the squirrel that ate your lunch, the speed limit on the 401, the Toronto Maple Leafs, your crazy esoteric friend who tells you have a good life, etc. Its endless.

Its like we have a  mantra that we say over and over to ourselves. Instead of saying "OM" we say "Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit..."

Life becomes a living hell and yet we live in the most prosperous affluent country in the world. It does not make sense. What gives?

What gives is WHAT WE GIVE...or more accurately, what we give our attention to.

There's a universal principle that states that whatever we put our attention on we get more of in life. Its not only a spiritual principle its proven in quantum physics. Researchers have observed that on a basic level of matter, the quantum level, the elements conform to the experimenters expectations i.e. what they put their attention on.

So if you want to stay unhappy in life...here's the secret. Keep noticing the things you hate about your life and you will just see and attract more and more of the same.

Okay so that's clear so how do we turn this around.

Let me offer you some suggestions from someone who was an expert at hating life.... me. I spent a good ten years perfecting the skill years ago when I was in commission sales...a job I took on that wasn't suited to me.

The first thing you have to turn around is your attention. Notice where it is consistently going.

Stop watching the evening news and then going to bed with all the disasters in your head. But before you do that, count the number of good news stories and compare it to the bad news ones. I bet you 10 to 1 is the ratio. Then you will realize where your attention is at.

Second thing... stop watching the commercials. But before you do that examine what each one of those commercials is selling  and infering about your life. Almost every one of them is not selling their products. They are selling a feeling of what you get when you buy them. Its a feeling of happiness and fulfillment of your dreams and by inference they are suggesting that somehow your life is deficient because you don't have what they are selling.

Advertising is the phoney foundation of our consumer culture and its basic purpose its to convince you that you are lacking, you are not enough, you are empty and you need all those material things to fill you and make you happy. Mostly what gets filled is our burgeoning landfill sites with all that stuff that get consumed or breaks down.

Third thing...put your attention on the things in life that you can be grateful for. It may initially be difficult because you are in the opposite habit but once you start this you will be amazed at how much we take for granted in life that we really should be thankful for.

Yes you have a big mortgage but how many people on this planet get to have a house like yours to live in? You have comfortable shoes...that were made with the sweat labour of people more disadvantged than you . You have lots of clothes, you have legs to walk on, you have a car, you have a medical system that you don't pay for. How many people in the world don't have these? The majority of people that don't have these on the planet think that we are living in heaven, yet we think it is Hell?

Begin to enjoy whatever you have. Don't wait until you lose it to appreciate what you had.  Don't be resentful for not having something you don't have.  Be grateful for what you have now, because you never know when you won't have it. Then you will  get stuck in regret and dislike for yourself for not appreciating what you had.

Fourth thing...put your attention on the inner abundance. Every night before you go to bed ask yourself "What did I learn today". "What new understanding came into my life?" You will start to experience the abundant wisdom that has been waiting all along to be discovered.

Its absolutely out in the open waiting to be picked like ripened fruit...the fruit of your life. You will experience the opposite of the old adage "The unexamined life is not worth living". You will experience a life that is well lived and well worth living.

Then maybe you can throw away all those half read self-help books by your bedside because your life has become an open book of wisdom written by your living that you can read every day and its never ending. You can become your own guru!

Do this for a week and I can guarantee an amazing thing will happen. You will start to feel good about your life.  You will start to feel happier. You will feel a sense of abundance not only externally, but internally. You will also start to feel good about yourself because in order to recognise the outer abundance you have to notice its also inside.

Goodness will come into your life. If you appreciate the wonderful qualities in your children even when they misbehave, they will notice on a subconscious level what you notice and will start presenting more of these qualities. If you are thankful for the money you have, see if more money comes into your life.

Maybe even be thankful for the fact that you can be unthankful about some things in your life because if you didn't have that discernment maybe you would not know what things you really need to change.  And if you are grateful for some of the things you have then you won't feel so hopeless about changing the things that really need changing.

Be appreciative of the basic fact that you even have a life, because it could be, as your weird esoteric friend says, "There were 100 souls competing with you to incarnate in this material plane and you were the lucky one that did"...might be true, eh?

So be grateful...you never know. You could have been born as the weird guy with the 13 facial piercings.

"Whatever you are doing, love yourself for doing it. When you learn to love hell, you will be in heaven"

 Thaddeus Golas - The Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment