“Happiness is like a butterfly: the more you chase it, the more it will elude you. But if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder.”

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Sometimes it seems that the harder you try to chase something, the further it moves away from you. This occurs in all walks of life: with money, relationships or success. Maybe it is because of the fact that you are scared that you will lose something you care about or that you will never get it at all. You start to focus so much on losing it and what life would be like if you lose it that it makes you needy and desperate (which is exactly what pushes you even further away from the thing you want).

This is especially true about relationships and dealing with other people. You have no control over the feelings and emotions of others. Everyone is unique and free, and thus have the liberty to make their own choices.

In relationships that have gone on for a long time (with family,friends or lovers) it happens that you start to grow apart. It may be because you develop different interests or because of some external event that had a big impact on your life. Either way, it is noticeable and rather unpleasant. Day by day the other person becomes more distant and less talkative. Every day you are aware of the fact that things are no longer the way they used to be and that you have no control over it.

When you feel that someone you care about is slipping away from you, then becoming needy is the last thing you want to do.

The more you try to keep them with you (by restricting them or telling what to do and how to feel), the harder they are going to repel you. I think that the best solution is to be yourself and be the person that caused your friends to give you your friendship in the first place. If their love and friendship is real and true, then it will find a way to shine and return to its best state. If you give the other person space and the freedom to walk away, they will come back to you if they truly care about you.

“You can bring the horse to the water but you can’t force the horse to drink.”

If you apply brute force to something mechanical that you are trying to construct or repair, then it will often cause more damage than before, if not irripairable damage. If something does not fit and you take a big hammer and smash it in to force it to fit, the object is likely to break. Gently does it, even with conflict. Punching someone in the face is usually not the best solution to conflict in contrast to having a discussion and coming up with a solution. There are of course exceptions where the use of brute force is the most effective solution but this is usually not the case.

Take retail for example…
You can hire the most brutal salesmen, have ads on every corner screaming at people to buy and do crazy give-away promotions but if your customer doesn’t have money or absolutely does not want to buy anything from you, you can’t force him to. Often a gentle and more under-the-radar approach takes you a lot further in getting someone to buy something from you. The best ways is actually not to force anything upon your customer at all, but rather provide immense value to them. That way they will feel respect and loyalty for you and out of reciprocity for the value you provide to them, they will want to support you and your business.

Take Control of What You Can

While you can’t force something to happen, you can do everything in your power to put yourself in the situation that is most likely to get you what you want. Let’s take the following as a practical example:

If you want to meet a girl or get more dates, you can’t force it to happen.

There is no way that you can go out and force someone to want to be with you. However, in this situation there are two possible situations that can occur and you are in control of which one you experience:

1-) You sit at home every night of the week feeling sorry for yourself and wishing a pretty girl came knocking on your door looking for a place to stay. You hope that for some magiccal reason the most beautiful girl in the club comes up to you and buys you a drink and stays with you the whole night.

2-) You take control of what you can. You decide to go out a few nights of the week to clubs/bars and approach 20 different girls a night. You join extra-mural classes like dancing, the gym or other social settings that have a lot of like-minded people attending.

Which of the above two situations do you think is more likely to get you to where you want to be?

The second one of course! It’s like that with any situation where you do not really have control of the ultimate outcome. While you may not have full control, you certainly have the control of yourself to go out and do everything you can to stack the odds in your favor. Put yourself in the crosshairs of what you are tyring to achieve. If you work hard and consistenly at something every single day, the chances are very big that you will reach your goal.

The more you focus on what you love (and less on what you fear), the more you will actually achieve what you want. The less you focus on picking up girls in a club (and instead focus on having fun), the more interactions with girls you will have. The less you focus on large sums of money overnight (and the more you focus on building up a business/site and giving value), the more money will come your way.

The Bottom Line

I think that the key of getting more of what you want is to focus on the things you love doing instead of focusing on your greed and fears. Do what you love every day and trust that the things you want will come to you eventually. They will come a lot sooner than you think.

Diggy writes all about self improvement at his blog UpgradeReality.com. If you are looking for motivation, inspiration or useful tips to live a better life, subscribe to his articles via RSS FEED or EMAIL