What you CAN Control
To be happy, peaceful, and successful, you must begin by realizing that you DO have control over what you think, what you focus on, how you feel, what you do, and what happens to you. You may have not yet figured out how to take control, but that doesn’t mean you cannot.
All of these things, for you, are now being determined unconsciously, but they still come from you. There is no other way for you to make progress and get what you want other than to decide that you can be, and will be, in charge of what you think, what you picture inside, what you feel, and how you behave. As long as you insist that you are helpless and a victim, you WILL be helpless and a victim. This is not a change I can make for you. You have to DECIDE to take control and to figure out how to do it. I have given you lots of big clues, but it’s up to you.
Once you take control, you have to know in what way to control yourself, and the main thing to keep in mind is that you must focus on what you want, and keep your mind off what you don’t want. When you tell me that you have lots of negative feelings when you focus on what you want, I can tell that you are only spending a few moments focusing on what you want, and then you begin focusing on what you don’t want, because the ONLY way you can have bad feelings is to focus on what you don’t want. As soon as you have bad feelings, that should be a signal to you that you have lost your focus on what you want, and you need to put it back on what you do want. You may have to do this over and over and over, and your mind may fight you (based on what you told me, it does). You have to keep going, and keep changing your focus to what you want. YOU are in charge of what you focus on—if you exercise that control. You are not at the effect end of the cause and effect spectrum, even though it seems to you that you are.
The final thing to consider is that you consistently resist "what is." This causes bad feelings and suffering. When things are a certain way, and you resist that fact, you suffer. So you just have to decide to stop doing it (and, of course, drop the idea that your resistance "just happens" and is outside your control). You, and only you, are in charge of what you focus on. Resistance is nothing more than focusing on what you don’t want, which means you CAN stop doing it, by changing your focus.