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Do you ever look around your life and think, 'This isn't the life I wanted. How did I get here? This is not what I envisioned!'

Well, you certainly aren't alone in that thought. In fact, my clients so often share this thought with me that I have given it its own name. I call this 'Being Caught in the Expectation Gap.' The 'expectation gap' is the gap between living the life you think you are creating and living the life you are actually creating. Dissatisfaction, frustration and disillusionment are experienced most prevalently when you expect one thing to happen and something else entirely shows up.

The truth is that you are always creating. You are the sole creator and attractor of all experiences in your life. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't believe you fall into the 'expectation gap' when you are creating using all your tools and resources. Quite the contrary. You fall into the 'expectation gap' when you are only aware of what your conscious mind is desiring and you are ignoring the other 88% of your mind ' your subconscious mind, where all the other amazing parts of you live with a multitude of desires.

Every person, you included, has multiple parts that make up the whole of who you are. These parts of you live in your subconscious mind. They are the various aspects of your personality that make you the rich and complex human being that you are. Each part of you has one primary function -- an intention as it were ' something it wishes to provide you or ensure for you. And every intention, at its core, is always good and chosen with your best interest at heart. Now, the way these various parts ensure their intentions are being met is through the use of behaviors. The behaviors that you display are actually driven by these various parts of you happily fulfilling their intentions for you.

The hiccup to this system comes when a part of you chooses a behavior that is limited or contradictory to another part of you. This is when you experience what is called a conflicting intention. Every part does have your best interest at heart, but it cannot always see the full picture (or the picture changes after an initial behavior is chosen). Thus, if you are not consciously seeking to know all the aspects of yourself and how all the various environments that make up your life interact, like relationships, finances, career, health, etc., you will find yourself experiencing conflicting intentions that block you from creating and manifesting what you believe you are creating. You cannot focus your pure energy on two completely opposite intentions. Thus, you end up creating the one that gets the most energy, if you are aware of it or not. And, ultimately, you end up in the 'expectation gap' frustrated, confused and back to the original thought of this article ' not living the life you envisioned.

For example, if a part of you wants to get a raise at work because you have a baby on the way, that part knows you must work longer hours to prove you deserve more money. The behavior chosen is to go into work earlier and stay later. The more you work, the more people rely on this behavior continuing. When the baby comes, another part of you -- the part of you that loves your new baby -- emerges. You desire to spend time with your new child and show it love, affection and protection. However, the behavior that you are still 'choosing' is working many long hours at the office. It appears, though, that it is not really 'your choice' as there is just so much on your plate and people expect you to be there as you have been. You may look at your life at this moment and not really understand. You may ask, 'Why me? Why am I always the one that gets stuck with all the extra work? All I really want is to be at home with my baby. Isn't that what is really important in life?' In reality, you have simply created two intentions and, in this situation, they actually are based on the same overall intention ' to provide for your baby. However, by not acknowledging your own assessment that in order to provide for your baby, you need more money and that means longer hours, you feel that you are not creating the life you want now. You think your life is being controlled by the requirements of your job and to the detriment of your family life. In truth, you have two beliefs that are butting heads because they are not being integrated.

Creating is something that you do naturally. You either create deliberately, by knowing what is happening in all the areas of your life and how they fit together, or you do it by default, by being only consciously aware of what you are creating and ignoring all those other aspects of yourself that are also playing a very active and influential role in the creation of your reality.

When you don't take into account the whole you and your responsibility for what is happening in your life, you become a person living at effect (instead of at cause). The universal Law of Cause and Effect says ' for every cause there is a reciprocating effect and for every effect there is a preceding cause. When you are creating by default ' without full awareness of all the desires, intentions and aspects of the whole you -- you cease to be in the power space of cause. You are not deliberately causing the events of your life, you are responding to them. This is when you end up in the 'expectation gap.'

Understanding the powerful creator inside of you is the first step in deliberately manifesting the desires most important to you. By breaking down your life into the segments that create it, what I call the Nine Environments of Holistic Living, you give yourself the opportunity to see what you truly desire and where your energy is being distributed. This is how you discover that you may have one intention (as displayed by one behavior or desire) in one part of your life and have another intention (displayed by another behavior or desire) in another part of your life that is opposite. Without taking the time to articulate each desire, what it means to you and why, you often are not aware of what the whole you is truly up to.

Once you do get the full picture, you then must seek out the possible conflicts. These conflicts are at the core of the 'expectation gap.' When you have two competing desires, you end up sabotaging either one or both of the desires. No matter how much you positively focus your energy, you negate it with the other desire. In my program, 'Being Spiritual Doesn't' Mean Being Poor! How to remove what blocks you from making money & creating happiness,' I offer 17 questions for each desire to get at its core. I then offer a comparison exercise for each of those questions to ferret out the competing forces. You can do this on your own, though, by simply comparing desires from one environment to the other. When you do find the conflicts, you have found the saboteur keeping you from manifesting.

The next step is clearing up your space so you can create what you truly want. There are many programs and exercises available to assist in this process. You cannot skip this step. You cannot focus pure energy with cluttered space. My preference, for meeting the aspects of yourself holding competing intentions, is Neuro-Linguistic Programming, also known as NLP. NLP is an advanced form of communication that can be used with others, but more importantly, with yourself. You can go beyond the conscious mind into the subconscious mind where your intentions, beliefs and behaviors are structured to make the changes needed for clearing. However you choose to achieve this step, it is imperative to deliberately creating the life you desire.

In the end, when you are aware of the whole you and what you are creating, my favorite method for bringing it all together is the Law of Attraction. The Law of Attraction is based on Quantum Physics and the idea that everything is energy. It says: That which you focus your attention on is what you create more of in your life ' wanted or unwanted. Learning to raise your vibrations to attract more of what you want and less of what you don't want allows you to take direct and indirect action toward the creation of your life. A tool that I created to offer a daily structure for engaging my creator is the Process of Deliberate Creation. This process gives me what I need on a daily basis to practice and master being the creator of the life I want to be living.

Simply becoming aware of the whole you and uncovering those conflicting intentions will have a huge impact on the manifestation of your desires. When you have a clean slate from which to create from, the tools for creating come much easier and provide amazing success. I encourage you to begin the journey. The rewards are nothing short of living your dream life!

Copyright 2005 Melissa Quiter