FAQ: Potential Wish List Problem #2 – The ‘Universe’ and its wicked sense of humour

It’s a funny thing about the focus mechanism in your head, as well as bringing to your attention all those things you’ve deemed important, you may find you start to notice all the things that are, on the face of it, the complete opposite.

Say for instance, that your three wishes basically amount to the same thing: “spend more time with the family.” You’ve created yourself a nice screensaver featuring pictures of you and the kids, and the walls of your office are now plastered with family photos. No sooner have you done this than your boss walks in and offers you a raise. And a promotion. And a new car. And an expense account. And a bigger office. InDubai. For six months.

Now clearly this job in Dubai runs counter to your wish. It is, none the less, a very exciting opportunity. You might even do a little detective work to see whether or not you can take your family with you – only to discover that you can’t. Should you take the job?

This scenario may seem unlikely but it’s happened to me enough times to realise that there’s a mechanism at work here. It’s almost as if the Universe, God, or a deity of your preference, picks up your Wish List and says, “So this is what you really want, is it? So you wouldn’t be the slightest bit interested in…” and ka-zaam! The total opposite of what you want is laid out before you, for the taking.

In moments like this I treat it for what it is.

A choice.

This is an opportunity to examine your heart. To think carefully about whether or not the items on your Wish List are things that you really want, or things that you should want. In short, it’s time to be honest with yourself.

Whether you take the job inDubai(or whatever your equivalent would be) is, of course, entirely up to you. And in my experience, decisions like this usually require a great deal of soul searching, usually when there’s very little time to do anything of the sort. Worse still, even once you’ve made the choice there’s nothing to stop the Universe (God, etc) coming back and asking you again, and again, and again, each time raising the stakes. That just seems to be how it works. So it’s important to keep in mind the original question:

What is it that you actually want?