Keys To Life: Why You Don't Have What You Want

In the last week's article on beliefs, we talked about how your beliefs can prevent you from having money. I'd like to look at that question in another light: how conflicting beliefs may not only prevent you from getting what you want out of life, but how they may wind up producing what you don't want.

You may recognize the phenomenon of wanting something and not having it contrasted with having something you don't want and having no idea where it came from.

In earlier posts, we looked at the role of choice in producing, or not producing, what you want. Choice couples nicely with awareness and focus - awareness of what you want together with the ability to focus on your desired outcomes, may very likely put you in the position of being able to produce what you want out of life.

But what happens when you seem clear on what you want, have some awareness of what you could do to produce it, and you still don't wind up with what you want?

Enter the world of vectors and vector addition. I'm pretty sure my mathematics and physics professors never imagined I would be doing to vectors what I am about to do!

Anyway, let's start with vectors. What is a vector you might be asking?

Simply stated, a vector is a line indicating a force moving in a direction and the length of the line indicates both direction and relative force (a longer line is more force than a shorter line). Now that I have completely butchered vectors, let's start to use them.

Imagine points on a compass to start. Just get North, South, East and West in your mind and you will have enough to work on. Now let's imagine one of your beliefs about money and it is pointing due North, and it is just one unit long.

Now let's imagine that another of your beliefs or goals about money is pointing directly East and that it is five units long.

Finally, let's imagine one more belief about money and it is pointing due South, and it is four units long.

If we could pretend that each of these "forces" were being applied simultaneously to the same spot on a tennis ball (and for those physicists in the audience, please do lighten up - give us a friction free environment with no other competing forces like gravity, etc). What direction would the tennis ball move? North? South? East?

None of the above! Enter vector addition. If you were to "add" these three vectors together, you might get something like the diagonal line below:

So the tennis ball winds up moving in a direction that doesn't look like any of the other three vectors. It's pretty much the same way with beliefs.

You can hold one belief about money (It takes long, hard work to make money), which contrasts with another (It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven), which may conflict with yet another belief, or even with a goal (I want be wealthy).

(Note: a comment last week pointed out that the camel-needle belief is true. Here's an interesting question to consider: What does "Eye of the Needle" actually mean? In ancient times, cities were contained within walls as a means of protection. Gates existed for access and were normally closed at night to prevent the bad guys from getting in. However, good guys sometimes arrived at night in caravans of camels. Since it was too risky to open the gate, many gates had smaller gates within them, often called 'the eye." It is said, although to my knowledge not proven, that Jerusalem once had a gate called "Needle." It also had an "Eye" or smaller gate. It was easier for a camel to pass through the Eye of the Needle for two reasons - camels were beasts of burden, carrying possessions. In order to pass through the Eye, the possessions had to be taken off their backs; in addition, camels had to get on their knees and crawl through the Eye. Unlike rich people, camels didn't mind giving up the possessions, nor did they mind getting on their knees (metaphor for humility). So, indeed, it is true. You just have to know (rather than believe) what the story is really about.)

If you "add" these three together, you may wind up with something that looks quite different from any one belief or goal. That could look like working hard, working long and not having much to show for the effort, other than stress and fatigue. Sound familiar?

So where are we, then? How do we explain the various conflicts in life, and the mixed results so many of us experience? It could be that part of the problem is lack of clarity on desired outcomes. Or it could be lack of focus on the desired outcome. Clarity and focus, though, probably aren't enough. You need to add in some awareness, some response-ability, and perhaps some communication. And on top of that, you may have to consider various inner conflicts and beliefs about what is possible or what is OK.

Whew! Getting to the fulfillment and quality of life experience you seek could be challenging! It is, and it isn't.

As you keep looking at the various moving parts we have been discussing (awareness, choice, response-ability, etc), you will begin to see connections and sooner or later it will become simple. And then you will bump into the paradox that simple and easy don't necessarily go together. In fact, simple rarely is easy.

Stay tuned!

***

You can find out more about Russell Bishop at http://www.lessonsinthekeyoflife.com. Contact Russell at: [e-mail]

The author of Lessons in the Key of Life, Russell is an Educational Psychologis, professional life coach and management consultant, based in Santa Barbara California.

Comments

[greendrake]

Maybe you don't have what you want because you want what you don't have.

Desire is suffering... just a thought.

[isosceles]

The arrows always point away from the goal.

This is evident when the goal is achieved, as being complete, the arrows no longer point in any direction at all, and one experiences the sought satisfaction.

If you were to make a diagram of this, all arrows would point towards the center from which they emerge.

Chasing a desire, the completion of a goal, is the entertainment of a fiction, as the wealth that springs from such completion is already your own. From where else could it emerge? When you are happy, what makes that happiness if not yourself?

It is not done by action. It IS done by inaction, by non-doing, by just being the happiness that IS when you stop doing, stop chasing, and realize that all movement is away from happiness, which is so easy it's ridiculous. Unfortunately, too easy for the modern man, programmed to chase, to just sit and see.

At best, the activity serves only to remind oneself that through suffering, through chasing, you are what you are looking for. If you play the game to completion, by either acquisition of percieved "goal" or surrender, you return to the simple beingness sought, from which the game itself pulled you away from.

Why play when you can just stop?

Inquire as to the source, the wellspring of the feelings sought through goal completion, and you will find yourself. You've always already had what you are looking for.

[lewes17266]

I love the commentary this time.

I really like your eye of the needle story too. I had never heard that.

[cinemaven]

(continued from my comment below... 250 word maximum conflicts with what I want! :)

When I look around at friends who are desperate to attract money, it seems to me that they're leaving other things behind. I'm by far the family member with the least monetarily but no one in my family comes close to me in pure joy and love of life. My marriage of 28 years is hopelessly sappyhappy and my kids are amazing. We laugh more than anyone I know. We play more than anyone I know and we are happier than anyone I know. We all put a priority on giving and sharing what we have so we volunteer at the food bank, my son plays music at a senior's center and my hubby is area captain on many donor drives. We mainly donate sweat equity but when we have money to spare, that goes where needed. I was (and wasn't) surprised to find that when we compared charitable donation lines on our income tax with my sis who's family makes 10X what ours does, we had donated more than 10X what they had. (100X if you count our time as well as our money)

[lewes17266]

cinemaven, Thank you for this. I was wondering if you have ever read "The Little Prince."
You remind me of the little boy, the prince. This is a famous quote from the book: "One cannot see well except with the heart, the essential is invisible to the eyes."

[cinemaven]

I have always believed that knowing what you want is the number one key to attaining it but the old adage, "be careful what you wish for" also applies. Your focus seems to be on attaining wealth in the form of money so the second adage is probably most appropriate for your blog.

I have enough... my home is old and worn, my car is old but serviceable, my purse manages to carry all of my items without a logo and both of my kids are addicted to thrift shop clothing hunts. My priority is a surfeit of laughter and happiness in my life. Money is far down the list for our family and that's fortunate since my husband is about to be laid off permanently. We'll get by because things haven't ever been a big deal for us. Because of that, we probably have less credit card debt ($3,200) and less other debt ($63,000 mtg) than most people and the market crash won't effect us because we've spent all of our "extra" money on both bringing down our debt, vacations/outings with family and charitable giving.

[Russell Bishop - Huffpost Blogger]

Hi Cinemaven: I appreciate your thoughtful comments. I'm really hoping that we can generate real dialogue on these subjects. Somehow what I write seems to miss the mark, possibly because these posts all build on one another, The constant theme is around awareness, choice responsibility and accountability. Awareness is the first and foremost. Awareness of what? Of what you want, or think you want. I'm all in favor of helping people get what they think they want so we can then ask, "Was that it?" My very first post on Symbols vs. Experience (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/russell-bishop/how-to-know-what-you-trul_b_112707.html) suggests that things like money are common areas of focus, and yet what people truly want out of life has nothing to do with money. You might consider reading this post and then let me know what you think. Indeed, life is much richer when one understands what truly matters. The challenge is that each of us are on different rungs of the ladder; no matter how highly evolved, there were likely lower rungs that needed to be climbed and higher ones that are there to be reached. So, I kind of like the advice that says: be a teacher to the rung below, a co-worker with those on the same rung, a student to the higher levels.

Blessings to you!

[markymark46]

And in conclusion (yak, yak, yak I know...)
And from a more empirical POV, we can arrive at levels of spending and quality of life mediums. What do you really need to live comfortably? This is not an impossible question to answer. We arrive at a political definition for what a minimum wage is, for what is torture and what is not.
Do you need a car that works well or a $100,000 car that shows your importance here on good ol' temporal Earth? If you go for the lavish spending on ones self, and donate $500 to a homeless shelter on Christmas, the score is not even. If you go so far to see the value in your giving $500 to the Shelter, you must also see the value of giving $30,000 to the Shelter. But instead that $30,000 went to your selfish need

[markymark46]

I stumbled onto this posting while reading up here on Huff Post so I don't readily see the history of what issues you are writing about.
However, I have recently been doing some research into the topic of wealth and Christianity. Your posting hit a bit on it.
There has been some rumbling in the Christian Communities as of late focused on the issue of wealth. Especially in the Evangelical wings. As these are 'younger' Christian denominations they are still manufacturing an ideology and liturgy (in the broadest sense) and many have tried to make being wealthy not just OK, but a sign that you must be in step with God/Jesus.
I can find little in the Bible that would support the idea of it being OK for anyone to have a great deal more than the worst off members in their society. It's starting to seem rather Schindler's List to me - "I could help a family eat tonight if only I had not spent $80,000 on a Mercedes."
To put in bluntly, if you are living in a position where luxury items consume your desires and drive your life, I'd have to say, according to the Bible, you are probably falling short from the teachings of Christ.
(it's a theory here folks, I'm working on a piece of fiction and have been building out research on the topic, I'm not an Academic).
See more in 2nd comment

[lovingkindness]

Beliefs and goals are both preconditioned . Is it no wonder that the outcome "misses the mark"?

Unless that conditioning is addressed and alleviated, reaching one's goal will not yield satisfaction, being based on a neurotic, or even disfunctional premises. It is naive, to say the least, that our society, the main agent of this conditioning, is completely wholesome, and free of denial. We use up the majority of the world's resources, invoking pain on the majority of the world's people. Christ's adage " Love thy neighbor as thyself" points to the need to frame your vector field within a real context of the actual world as it is today.

Your interpreting Christ's saying about the "camel and the needle" ignors the rest of the statement, "than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven", and is barren of contextual references, e.g.Christ's advising a rich man to distribue ALL he has to the poor.

I wonder why Christ's statement bothered you so much you had to find a way to nullify it? The need to question one's belief system applies to everyone, more so in this case.This is not about money, worthless in itself. It is about whether one sees the world from the point of view of self centred interest, or as an interlinked community.

An important question should be " Can I reach the goal without doing harm." This requires knowledge of the broader context of our actions, without denial.

[Russell Bishop - Huffpost Blogger]

Dearest Lovingkindness: Far from being bothered by Chris't message and ministry, I am in support of the basic commandment to be Loving. The camel-needle story says it is EASIER for a camel because the camel is NOT ATTACHED to it's possessions nor is it troubled by the humility of being on its knees. Notice how I wrote: "Unlike rich people . ." My counsel would be to look for how these ideas might actually fit rather than trying to find something that contains againstness. Just for fun, let me share with you that I have 4 Presbyterian ministers in my family! We can swap bibilical learning if you like. Just look for how these messages might be supportive of a greater message and something quite lovely might click. And do read my earlier post about Symbols vs. Experience (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/russell-bishop/how-to-know-what-you-trul_b_112707.html). Blessings to you!

[lovingkindness]

Dear Russell: I read your link and we already agree there. Perhaps you misconstrued the point I was trying to make. (btw I 'm not a biblical scholar, being more Buddhist in practice)

I too am concerned about a "greater message". I share the feelings of many, some of whom have commented on your blogs. Our concern is that self-empowerment devoid of awareness of that greater message is at the root of many of the world's problems.

To me the greater message is " love AND do no harm". Residing there IS quite lovely! This implies awareness of the real consequences of our choices. I'd love to see you speak on this. One can be unattached to possessions but still unconcerned with how they are obtained. How that affects our neighbors. And the planet.

As my character "Cowboy Pete" says, " Forget about getting rid of the ego. If you expanded that ego to include all of Creation, how would you ever want to do harm to anyone or anything?" ( the context of this implies that one has dealt with prior conditioning and become non-neurotic)

On the other hand, becoming "self empowered", better able to contribute within a disfunctional society, does not go far enough to address the underlying causes of people's unhappiness. Perhaps you agree?

A final note: Using rhetorical devices such as "againstness" is polarizing. Best to address the issues raised, having faith that the speaker is sincere, don't you think?

[Alex Pattakos - Huffpost Blogger]

Great job, Russell--you have stimulated some interesting comments! And you have proven that all "vectors" don't think alike! :) You and your visitors may be interested to know that I'll be writing about the concept and technique of "paradoxical intention" next week in my "Living with Meaning" column. I think that you'll find my perspective in alignment with your own.

And for those out there who may disagree with you (and me) but who still would like to see HuffPo's Living Section become an authentic "community" of meaningful dialogue, here's a statement that, believe it or not, I heard from a German Roman Catholic Bishop at a meeting that I was facilitating in Switzerland years ago: "You can not enter into relationship with others if you believe that you have a monopoly on truth."

Here's to the thrill of "vectory!'

[songbird1268]

Give us all an effing break. We all know good and well that the reason we don't have what we want is that America's Ruling Class has taken us straight back to eleventh century feudalism.

http://www.alternet.org/election08/101694

[Sadducee]

I don't have what I want because the stock market ate up all my money.

[Russell Bishop - Huffpost Blogger]

Hey Sadducee: Funny, although part of me is a bit nervous as well. You might see an earlier post I did on distiguishing what we focus on vs. what we really want: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/russell-bishop/how-to-know-what-you-trul_b_112707.html

The current financial situation certainly has a lot of focus these days so I will be posting some thoughts on how to both survive as well as thrive the changes that are affecting the markets and the lives of many. I think it is the Chinese who have a character that can be read as "Threat" or as "Opportunity." Here's to finding the way up!

[Russell Bishop - Huffpost Blogger]

Hey John: I am gratefu that you offered something similar, if not better, last year. Question for you: Are you saying that the purpose, direction, or undelrying message is off base some how? If it is on point, and just not as elegant or eloquent as others have expressed, then that's cool too. As I have written in the past, these ideas have been expressed over and over again for several thousand years. Neither you nor I can lay claim to them. However, if the version you did last year helped someone who had not previously been aware, then bravo! I'm sure those who were helped along the way are grateful as well. The funny thing about writing these each week is the kinds of criticisms that arise. I have been accused of stealing from Christ, the Seven Pillars of Islam, the teachings of Buddha, etc. Or, as I was told in graduate school: stealing from one source is plagiarism; stealing from six or more is research. I prefer to think of this as passing on timeless wisdom from the Divine. If only one person is helped, then the Blessings have been bestowed.

[justjohn]

(Apologies if this is a duplicate post.)

I'm not going to claim any superiority, since both of us are pushing swag, BUT my version works WITHOUT the Divine.

[Russell Bishop - Huffpost Blogger]

Hey - if it works, it works! And if there is something such as the Divine, it probably doesn't care! As far as I know, it never even named itself! Neither did the Truth ever claim itself to be so. I guess it kind of takes one of us to do the naming. How do I read more of what you have written?

[justjohn]

Cripes, I did a better version of this metaphor last year: http://justjohn.livejournal.com/181568.html

And I didn't have to slaughter any perfectly innocent math genres to do it!