The Secret

he secret is developing away from a conciousness that gets what it wants to a consciousness that wants what it gets.
Jagdish Parikh

It is your ego that is the conciousness that gets what it wants. Your ego is constantly wanting new things in an effort to make you feel more important or powerful. It is a useful question to ask ourselves what is the real reason that we want some thing. Typically it is because we beleive that that thing will make us more important or powerful, and therefore happier. But the truth is that no particular thing can make us happy. Real happiness comes from inside us. It comes from an attitude, not any particular thing.

Real happiness comes from wanting what you get. If you only wanted what you had, you could never be discouraged or disappointed; and if you wanted everything you had without exception, you could never be sad or anxious or fearful. Thing how nice that would be! But when we are in a state of pain or poverty or hunger, it is very difficult to want what we have. In order to really want those things, we have to truly understand that the pain or poverty is meant to teach us something; to help us learn and grow and evolve. "Every cloud has a silver lining" if we will only stop to look for it instead of just wishing the whole cloud would go away.

So the secret of success is being happy with what you have already got; and being able to see the blessings all around you. But that doesn't mean you need to be perfectly content with what you have and never want more. There is a balance between having a burning desire for something and having a desire that hurts you. We are meant to always be wanting more. But when we approach our desire from a veiwpoint that doesn't expect this particular thing to make us happy (because we are already happy) or build our picture of who we are (or feel we should be); but is something we expect to get because we feel worthy and capable of it, then we will have found the secret to real success.