When I was younger a lot of things bothered me, a lot of things made me happy, a lot of things made me sad, a lot of things upset me, a lot of things amused me. My feelings and my moods were constantly batted around by whatever was going on.

Scoring an “A” in a tough exam... I felt fabulous.

When anyone yelled or shouted at me... I felt crushed.

When something I was counting on fell through... I felt disappointed.

When somebody sent me an unexpected gift... I felt elated.

You get the general idea. I saw my 'life' as a racquet and 'myself' as a ball.  It seemed that 'fate' was the player in control of the game of my life. I never knew where I’d end up every time I got “hit” by the foibles of fate.  As I became older and more successful, the less I felt that I had any control over anything....it was my fate...in fact, the more complicated my life seemed to be, the more volatile and stressful my experience became! I attributed it to taking on the all the serious responsibilities of adulthood. Stress, as I thought then, was the inherent burden of my own success.

It was during my divorce that I had a mortifying innate moment of truth: I saw that everything I had ever experienced or felt was the result of my thoughts about what was happening. It had nothing to do with what was actually happening. I was living in my experience of what I thought was happening. As soon as I had that profound insight, I knew in the very depths of my soul that it was true. For a brief time, I hated that it was true as I realised that I was totally responsible for how I 'felt' throughout my life.  My wife cheated on me once, but in my mind then, she was cheating on me every second of every day....This was the thought  

There was no one and nothing to blame for my sufferings (and no one to thank for my joys) but me. I was the player! My thoughts were the racquet; the ball, my feelings. The ball moved wherever I directed it with every swing.

The bad news that there was nothing but myself to blame morphed into good news the minute I realized that if my Thought was the power behind everything I felt about life, I could create anything I wanted to with life events. There were no boundaries to possibility! I transformed from the hapless victim of life circumstances to the empowered creator of my own life. It seemed too good to be true. But, I knew, deep down, it was true and every single thing I had experienced all my life was nothing more than the shadow of my thoughts!