The Secret of Having Everything You Want!

by Guy Finley

Everyone wonders whether or not there is one great secret for truly successful living. There is. And it is not a secret. It has been quietly, steadily telling itself right in front of us all along. We just couldn't hear it over the clatter and chatter of our own secret demands. Listen quietly for a moment. Everything can change right now.

Learning to hear this supreme secret is no more difficult than choosing whether to swim against a current or to let it carry you safely to the shore. Let it speak its wisdom to that secret part of you that can not only hear what it is saying but that is, in reality, its very voice. Listen to it now. It is saying, "Want What Life Wants." Locked within these four simple words is the secret of an uncompromising power for effortless living; a new kind of power that never fails to place you on the winning side of any situation. Why? Because when you want what Life wants, your wish is for Life itself.

Here are two lists that will not only make these life-healing ideas more personal for you, but they will help you to help yourself make a higher choice when it comes to what you really want from life.

Let's look at what happens When You Want What You Want:
1. You are often nervous and anxious because life may not cooperate with your plans.
2. You are willing to sacrifice whatever it takes to get what you want, and this may include your integrity.
3. You are usually scheming in some way to win your next victory.
4. You are either in a battle or recovering from one.
5. You are unable to rest quietly when you need to.
6. You are easily angered when someone or something gets in your way.
7. You are forever driven to want something else.
8. You are against anyone else who also wants what you want.
9. You are certain that what you have is who you are.
10. You are always trying to convince yourself that you got what you want.

Now carefully consider the following When You Want What Life Wants:
1. You are never disappointed with what happens.
2. You are always in the right place at the right time.
3. You are quietly confident no matter what the circumstances.
4. You are out of the reach of anger and anxiety.
5. You are awake and sensitive to your surroundings.
6. You are free of ever feeling as though you've missed out.
7. You are never thrown for a loss.
8. You are in total command of events.
9. You are mentally quiet.
10. You are eternally grateful.

Always remember the following. If any want is the source of anxiety or sorrow, that want is yours and not Life's. Never accept the presence of any mental or emotional suffering as necessary, no matter how much importance these impostors lend to a particularly pressing want. By refusing their dark presence, you make space for the present moment to give you its indefinable presence. This is where the Life that you want -- and that wants you -- is waiting.

Some might ask, “But what will happen to me if I give up my demands?

Won't I lose control of my life?"

You cannot lose control of something you never had control over in the first place. No human being controls life —his, hers, or anyone else's. If it weren't for higher cosmic energies coming down, filling and animating your body right now, you couldn't be holding this magazine in your hands or reading its words. If you want to measure the level of an individual's stress, measure his insistence that life does as he wants. The only thing you will lose by learning to want what life wants is your fear of not being in control—which was never real control in the first place.

Here is the most important point of all. No human being needs control over life because, in reality, no one is apart from it. Who you really are, your True Nature, is not separate from life.

Let Life bring you itself. Welcome it. At each instant, it is new, full—untouched and undiminished by any moment before it. To enter into this full relationship with Life is to give yourself to your Self. Fulfilling the true purpose of Life is fulfilling your self.

(Excerpted from The Secret of Letting Go by Guy Finley, 2007 revised edition, Llewellyn Publications.

Guy Finley is the best-selling author of The Secret of Letting Go, The Essential Laws of Fearless Living, and 35 other works that have sold over a million copies in 18 languages worldwide. Visit his website: