Everyone sees the world in a different light – to some it is full of suffering and to others it is full of love. It is not just about optimists seeing glass as half-full. It is about realizing that the reality you know may not be the actual reality.

I had just experienced it a few days ago – both my family and I were at the same room in the same time but our perceptions of what happened were like night and day. I focus on positivity and I generally see my life is happy and fulfilled so to me it was a nice family gathering where my fiesty 5 month old was getting all the attention but we managed her. To my mother in law, however, the event looked like we were suffering, the baby was suffering and everyone was suffering.

What you focus on is what you attract – if you only see suffering it is because you train your brain to only see that, and then you get more of it from the universe because you are sending signals to the universe. It is responding based on what it gets from you.

Have you ever noticed when you decide to look for a new job, suddenly everywhere you go, everywhere you look, everyone you talk to brings up the subject of someone hiring? You go to catch a bus and there are ads inside the bus of job searching services. You open your emails and get updates from LinkedIn, Indeed and all newsletters you get suddenly write about resumes and interviews. You get the picture.

In order to control the reality you want to have to get the life you like, you first need to be aware of how you currently see the world. You need to challenge your assumptions about the world, to pay attention to your thoughts and actively challenge them until you reprogram your mind to think differently. You also need to be able to imagine a different reality, a reality that you want to have. You need to understand what you want your life to be and be able to describe it to yourself and allow yourself to believe it is possible to achieve, regardless how far it might seem right now from your actual reality. Far does not mean impossible to arrive to, it just means that the journey to get there will take more time.

For example, if you believe that life is hard but your ideal version of reality is where you are confident and enjoy the life you are living by living next to a beach. It is not enough to ‘fake it till you make it’. You need to reprogram your mind so that your thoughts, your response to every event is that of a confident person.

Instead of ‘this is hard but I need to accept it and suck it up‘, think ‘look at me what I can do! I did not have the skills to deal with it last year but now it comes easy to me. I wonder what else I can do‘. Or, better yet, you will start questioning your reality – life is not supposed to be that hard, what should I change to make it easier? Does it mean finding another job, changing careers, moving to a different place, starting or ending relationships, going on a diet or going off a diet, learning new things? Whatever it is, it can be changed, altered, improved. Keep working on your life until it takes shape of the exact life you want.

We get to a certain level of life that is proportional to the level ot effort we put in. Sometimes we need to put some extra effort to push ourselves into a new level of life – it is the transition between levels that takes more effort but once you have transitioned the effort required will even out. For example, a different level can be tied to finances – transitioning from living just below the poverty line to a middle class. It will not just take job change, it will take shifting your mindset, increasing education level, meeting new people. It will not be just as hard as picking up extra shifts – pursuing a degree takes several years. However, it is not impossible and once you push yourself through the process you will emerge on the other side and you will be amazed at how much you can do if you believe in yourself.

So if you do not like your reality then become conscious of your thoughts because they impact the decisions and choices you make and the actions you take. The life is what you make it.