If fate intended you to be rich, then all you have to do is just wait for the business of the century, money, spouse, health and wealth to fall into your lap. Most people understand fate as something static as if there were a message written in the stars that said, "This is the way it's going to be and it's not up to me." No wonder a passive life develops from this attitude, lives where people wait for their fate to find them and just happen.

Years go by before they realize that in all this time they have not experienced anything and have virtually slept through most of their days in a monotonous routine of work, lunch, dinner, occasional entertainment, television and rest. Each day is the same, boring routine until the days become months and finally they stretch into years. Not to mention, they have probably been struggling for money and possibly survival, experiencing health and relationship problems and such.

It is not surprising that in the end, all this leads to the final confirmation that "I am not intended to live the good life." Joey McCormick, a philosophy professor at the NC Sate University, and author of many philosophical, religious and medical books, sometimes compares life with a jail cell, where institutionalized prisoners no longer remember their previous life of freedom.

Instead, their only goal becomes meager attempts to improve their living conditions (if they can) within the prison walls. They may paint walls with the vivid colors of nature, hang posters or magazine pictures to cover the ugly walls that surround them. All the while, they're dreaming about a better life and envying other prisoners for meager privileges above their own. Even worse maybe their cells are wide open and nobody is forcing them to stay in the prison! They are free to go and experience a new, exciting life.

They refuse to believe that somewhere a better life awaits them. No, they would rather put another poster on the wall, and dream on about a better life than take the chance of moving towards it only to wind up disappointed. For a prisoner to survive inside and behind bars, within the prison system, he or she must engage in a wide range of mind-games. The most important one is to forget your life outside the walls.

Unfortunately, this is also the most dangerous game of all, because its successful execution means you must become satisfied with the limited life you now have. If a new prisoner comes in with grand tales of life outside, the rules of the game force the prisoner to reject them, not because they don't believe them, but because they don't want to believe them. Believing the stories makes living the restricted and limited life inside unbearable. Believing would change their attitude about the limited life they are living and they simply "can't afford" for that to happen. Believing the messenger might elicit talking, thinking and dreaming of escape - but the road from here to freedom is long.

Many people live in a mental prison as strong and confining as those who are behind bars. They have all the freedom in the world, but they exercise none of it because they are afraid to believe, like the prisoner, that a better life can be theirs. Why? Because it takes courage to change your life, to break the old patterns, change old habits and rebuild your mental infrastructure.

It is easier to stay where you are, blame others and tell yourself: "No, this is too hard. Who am I to think that I can make it happen? What if I fail? Right now, I have something; maybe it isn't what I wanted or even what I like, but it's something.