DRAMA IS OPTIONAL

INTRODUCTION: What if … you found Aladdin’s lamp and the Genie granted you three wishes. What would you wish for – after, of course, the million dollars and the car of your choice? Would you want to be a better student? Would you want to be more popular? Would you want to have better relationships with your family and friends? Would you want your body to be healthy and fit? Would you like all the drama in your life to be gone for good? As the title of this book suggests, drama is optional. According to Webster, “drama” is a series of emotional events, and “optional” means you have a choice to allow something or not. As I scanned my computer of viruses the other day I thought about how easy it would be if we had a personal antivirus program, within our minds, to detect viruses that attack our thinking. If we could press a button and see what thoughts were causing us to feel jealous, hurt, and stressed, we could remove them from our consciousness. How easy it would be if we just created thoughts that would make us feel happy and make our lives work perfectly. The thing is … it is that easy! Pretend your life is a book in progress and you are the author. Ask yourself what the completed chapters look like and how you want the next chapter to be. If you could create your life any way you choose, what would you change? What would you add to your life, and what would you take away from it? Look at the questions at the top of this page and really think about what you would like to create in your life. If the next chapter of your life could be any way you wanted it to be, if you truly were the author of your life – of your next experience – what would it be like? Here’s the secret to having the life you want: your life is created by your thoughts. When you ask people what they want in their lives, they usually start telling you what they don’t want. What they don’t realize is that we get exactly what we focus on – and focusing our attention on what we don’t want just creates more of what we don’t want in our lives. Most of us have a hard time describing what we do want because our attention is focused on what we don’t want. What if we started thinking about what we do want – really thinking about what would make us happy, what would make our heart’s smile – and started putting our attention on that? Ah … what then? Pretend you life is a computer. It has been said that even in the most complicated computers there are only three components: the hard drive, the operating system, and the programs. Scientists have described life as a consciousness computer that also has only three components; our physical world is the hard drive, our consciousness is the operating system, and our thoughts are the programs. You don’t change the hard drive on your computer to create something new, you change the programs. It is the same in life. If you want to create something for yourself, you don’t have to change your physical world; you simply change your thoughts. Changing your thoughts literally changes the experience you create in your life because your thoughts create your feelings and emotions – and your feelings and emotions have the power to make you feel really, really good, or really, really bad. I have been fortunate over the past twenty or so years to have studied with many great teachers in the field of self-improvement. Through their seminars, book, and CD programs, I have learned valuable life lessons from people like Dr. Wayne W. Dyer, Marianne Williamson, Caroline Myss, don Miguel Ruis, and Tony Robbins. The wisdom of these great teachers has given me the tools to create a life of peace, prosperity, and joy – and the passion to want that kind of life for others. I have learned that who we are is not what we do. You won’t find a Ph.D. after my name; in fact the only designation you will see – work related – is real estate broker. I chose a career in real estate when I became a single parent thirty years ago so I could schedule my work time around my family time. I wanted to be available for the important things in life like keeping score at my daughter’s basketball games and attending my son’s football games. Who I am is much more that mother, grandmother, sister, aunt, and friend, but those are the designations I treasure most in my life. Please don’t put this book down now because you just found out it was written by a grandmother. Remember that we learn for each other – and two of my greatest teachers are my teenaged granddaughters. Grandparents – and parents for that matter – have fallen down and gotten back up more times than we would like to admit in our lives, which, of course, creates the experiences we can use to write a book like this. The only way we learn anything is from experiences, so pay attention to the experiences that feel good in your heart and allow them to created positive changes in your life. The intent of this book is to offer you some tools to help you create your next chapter any way you choose. I have written this book for teens because I have two teenage granddaughters. I wanted to take the secrets that I have learned over the years and condense them into a “just the facts” book that teenagers would enjoy. I have noticed that the majority of teenagers today are living their lives as if they are already grownup, creating schedules for themselves that don’t allow much peaceful time. They seem to have forgotten that the purpose of being young is to enjoy life …to enjoy the process of growing up. My attempt here is to give you some ideas that will help you create positive feelings and emotions – to create the life you want to live and be the person you want to be. I am confident that by the time you finish this book you will have been given the tools you need to know that life is good!