If I could just make more money . . . then everything will be perfect. If I could just get over this illness . . . lose 5 kg . . . finish this post-graduate degree . . . marry him . . . get a new wardrobe . . .

Author and teacher, Teri Uktena, writes that most of us have gone through times when we think the answer to everything we want in life is something outside us. If I could just get beyond this hurdle, then everything will be perfect. Those of us who get the if-I-could-wish to come true would know that it resolves nothing because that one thing isn’t the key to the problem, only the solution to a symptom.

Many people think that all their if-I-could issues would be resolved by winning the lottery. However, just take a look at lottery winners years down the line. They sort of end up where they started from. Studies found that these winners weren’t necessarily happier people and that long-term financial freedom is not a given.

Teri says that the real issue is: To have the life you desire, you have to become the person you want to be. The answer is always inside. We are meant to contribute our uniqueness and we’re meant to do it by following what we’re passionate about. Footnote here: This doesn’t necessarily happen through one career, one skill or in one field of life.

When people say they don’t know what they’re passionate about, they’re actually saying they don’t know whether what they’re passionate about could be converted into money or fame.

If you probe less than a millimeter below the surface, Teri says you will find that these people do have passions galore, but they’re labelled as just-for-fun. People are under the misconception that the word refers to something all-consuming, earth-shattering, a knights-of-the-round-table kind of fervour that involves dragons and maidens in distress. This is by definition way more like an obsession, not for the faint of heart; it doesn’t allow you to lead a normal life and rarely leads to happily ever after.

Leave the torrid obsessions to the movies, says Teri. Your real passions are the things you enjoy doing, collecting, participating in and being. Things that allow you to be your true self.

So, you’d think that once you’ve identified what it is you want to do, the next thing would be to figure out how to do it. Wrong. In ‘Owner’s manual for a life within time and space’ Mike Dooley says that step number one is thinking about your desired outcome in its final form – the end result. Don’t worry about the how – it will just bog you down.

Life coach Christy Whitman says when you imagine the end result; you have to be clear on how you want to feel. Focus on that feeling. Feel it now.

Mary Morrissey calls this process ‘scaffolding’. For example, see yourself in a year’s time with a graduation cap on your head. Skip ahead another couple of years and see yourself standing in front of a classroom. Use these images and the feeling they give you as scaffolds. The process of doing this is ‘imagineering’, a term coined by Walt Disney.

Mary says it is a universal rule that everything happens twice: once in your imagination and then in reality. “Perception is a choice and not a fact,” states ‘A course in miracles’. “The world you see is an outside picture of an inward condition.”

Or, á la Mike Dooley – “thoughts become things”. Mike says that once you’ve thought about what you want, the next step is to start following hunches, instincts and intuition. Never dismiss your random ideas. Pay attention to so-called coincidences and accidents.

Remember that your belief in the necessity of blood, sweat and tears or sacrifice, worthiness and years may severely impede your progress, as will worrying about the hows-and-means.

Teri says that no one sees the path ahead clearly. We aren’t meant to. That kind of distance would keep us from actually living. Living, expressing who we are, is what we came here to do. And we came here to do it on a variety of levels – in relationships, health and wellness, creativity and career.

As Walt Whitman says in ‘O Me! O Life!’: “That you are here – that life exists and identity, That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.”