The growing consensus is that we create our own realities—which many might agree with when things are going well (“oh yeah, I did it”), but the tides change when problems arise (“now it’s all their fault”).

I think we all know someone—it could even be us—who is always having a bad day or is constantly sick or always in debt or has the world’s worst luck…

But could they—could we—be creating our own problems?

In Your Very Own Drama Channel, by Nuno Alves, he describes how we attract our own drama, “…especially when we reject something with passion.” And what’s worse, our problems and pet peeves will saturate our lives—if we let them. He explains how the offensive nature of holding grudges is destructive because it attacks the “outside” but clarifies “There is no outside. It’s all inside you.”

What a revelation, to think we could just “change the channel” and solve our own problems.

Leo Babauta of Zen Habits recently wrote the blog post, This Moment, in which he says our minds create our own real problems—it’s our self-created thoughts of how we wished the world should be that is our true hindrance. He urges us to “let go and accept this moment—light, sounds, the thing you’re sitting on, the things moving or sitting still around you—and its perfection, just as it is.”