When I’m shopping or out in public it often seems that people or cars constantly cut in front of me and lollygag. So often does this happen that I often say to myself – I bet this person will cut right in front of me and putz around, and sure enough it always seems to happen. It’s weird – Almost like my thinking creates my reality.

So I tried a little experiment recently. I decided to change my expectations. Now I think – “He won’t cut in front of me. Or if that car does cut in front of me, it’ll just move ahead and won’t putz around.” And amazingly, it seems to work. I no longer seem to experience people continuously disrupting my flow.

Hopefully, I’m smart enough to know that changing my thoughts about outside events won’t directly affect the outside events. What it does, however, is impact my perception of the events. And that’s all that really matters. Because at the end of the day, reality is nothing more than our perception of it.

Changing my thoughts about “life flow” has helped me (at least occasionally) live more peacefully. I’m not worried about people cutting in front of me. I’m not worried about disruption. I’m living in the present moment.

It takes work to monitor my thoughts. But is extremely important – at least to me. My contentedness depends on it. As Buddha was said to have said: “What we think we become.”

The world is as it is. Whether it’s with us or against us depends on only one thing – our perception of it.

Timothy Velner is a husband, father, attorney and author living in Minneapolis. You can follow his daily blog – a series of discussions between the worry-self and the present-self at – thespiritualgym.me