I've prayed for a lot of things when I was younger, some to the point of obsessing over them. Anything from marriage, to money, to jobs, and so on. Some things I got, other things I did not. As I got older and began to work on my iman, I read more about Islam, the Quran, the hadith, the stories about the prophets, I learned to accept that whatever I have or don't have, the good times and all the hardships, was all due to the will of Allah and it made me more at peace with myself. The issues I had of obsessing over things is now completely gone.
That's not to say that I don't get stressed out about things in life. We are human after all, but how those situations are dealt with are completely different now than how they once were. I think the intention here is important as well. Not saying you do this or not, but I came closer to the religion not for the sake of hoping to exchange my deeds for getting my prayers answered like some kind of barter system with Allah (ie. if I pray for a year, then I deserve to have this prayer answered), but rather for the sake of changing my life for the better and working towards the hereafter regardless of whatever situation I'm faced in. Honestly, that change has to be from within. As long as I was stuck in my ways and held the same mentality, it didn't matter what advice people gave me if I wasn't willing to make the sacrifices and changes within my own life. Just something to think about.
