Karma is not always from past lives. Of course you have lessons to learn from unfinished cause and effect cycles of previous incarnations. Yet, too often, people focus so much on this, that they forget they are creating karma (good and bad) every minute of this life as well.
Mostly, people become aware of their karma when they are forced to deal with its effects. They hardly ever stop to think of the causes as they are creating them. As a result, it is far too easy to cause chaos in our lives without even realizing it.
Karma is created in how you make choices every day, as well as how you deal with each situation in life as it is presented to you. To understand this, try to visualize a universe made up of many different karmic pathways. It is as if each is a road that leads somewhere, with its own unique set of lessons that must be learned, tests that must be met, and karmic scenery that needs to be understood in order to evolve.
Every choice you make can either move you along a path, or stall you in problems that test your willingness to continue the path you are on.
Your past life actions and the unfinished lessons you have reincarnated with this time around put you on a current life path. How you proceed along that path is determined by how honestly and sincerely you adapt to the conditions of the path you are on.
There are no shortcuts to resolving karma. In fact, for those who try to get through life by skipping lessons, avoiding karmic tests, or using devious sneak-around methods to get through obstacles, karma gets heavier instead of lighter, and their soul tends to lose any levels of evolution or happiness they had.
A good example of this would be to consider how much you are aware of your cause and effect in the chain of events we call human life. Think on this.
Every time you buy something, you are feeding some family you do not even know, quite possibly on the other side of the world. This is very good karma because you are honoring the efforts of everyone involved in the product you bought, from its creator, to those who helped manufacture it, to those who helped package it, to those who shipped it, to those who delivered delivered it, and to those who sold it to you. The list is too long to mention everyone, - for there could well be many more individuals who benefit every time you buy a product.
What about the person who tries to go through life on the cheap- even though they can afford the things they need, they nevertheless cut corners whenever they can, living on the free samples of life they can get while borrowing time and space from other people against their will, and basically living a life without inner honor?
When the time comes for this second kind of individual to really need help from the universe, it does not respond to them, because they have not paid their karma to the world they live in and as a result it basically has no karmic space for them to fit in.
If we sincerely want to fulfill our karma so that our lives can become easier for us, we have to ask ourselves every day, with every choice we make. What is the correct choice or decision to fulfill the karmic path I am on? Only in this way, can we be sure that we are not cheating ourselves of the evolution and happiness we could achieve.
