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I have made a big deal about the fundamental uncertainty of the forces that govern our universe and our individual lives. I have said that the best we can do in exerting influence in the world is to move the probability curve one way or another. And there is much evidence to support that view. There is widespread advice that we cannot control events in our lives. I know people who say that none of the biggest changes in their lives were planned. There is research in free will that usually concludes that we don’t have free will because so little of what we consciously decide to do actually happens. All of this is consistent with my position in the model that our connection with the universe is at the level of quantum events and we can only know and influence quantum level events. This implies that it should be hard to influence macro-level events, like how my business will do or whether I loose 10 pounds. On the other hand, if we look at peoples’ lives we see that each individual life is characterized by a set of repeating patterns and outcomes. One person my have lots of trouble in his or her life: Always poor, always have bad relationships, has lots of legal problems. Another person may have lots of serene success. Another my have a very steady and consistent life: each year is pretty much the same as the last. Change is possible, but for the most part each person is very effective at maintaining that patters that characterize his life. If good fortune comes to the person with a troubled life, or trouble comes to the person with the “successful” life, they deal with it and quickly return to the normal patterns for their lives. Why to people live the kinds of life they do? Our lives and our patterns are the sum of all the learned experiences in our lives. If you can go back and review the formative experience is a person’s life, you can usually see the seeds of the kinds of patterns that characterize each life. So, we have these formative experiences and they become part of our view of reality and we are all fully capable of making the reality we experience conform to those leaned experiences. The power we exert in the world to make that happen is truly amazing. We call in the right kinds of people into our lives to execute our usual patterns. We overspend on credit cards to keep us poor, or we work persistently on our novel to produce another best seller. My point is that everyone is equally capable of shaping our material realities to conform to our learned beliefs about how the world is, whether our life is a continuous train wreck or a serene journey. How do we reconcile that with our inability to control things in the material world? The difference, I believe, is that the things we can’t control are products of our conscious, verbal minds. The things we can control are products of our deeply held feelings and beliefs that are mostly subconscious. People with serene lives are probably comfortable with that idea. I know that many people with train wreck lives are very unhappy with that idea: “You’re not going to tell me that it’s all my fault!!” But I take it as a very encouraging idea. The way the world works is that we all have enormous power to shape our material reality, for better or worse. The way we shape our reality comes from our learning experiences. If we learned it once, we can learn something else again. That means that if we can change our fundamental beliefs, we can change any and all aspects of our lives, including relationships, finances, health and everything else. The obvious catch to this rosy view is that is appears to be hard to consciously change or inner beliefs, so making changes in our fundamental life patterns is not common. Since the up-side is so big, it seems to me to be worth the effort.