Opportunity is Everywhere

I woke up one day, looked in the mirror and only thought about negative things when I saw her. It wasn’t a fun season of my life. It was like I had my own personal assistant whose only job was to make me feel like shit – except she lived in my head and she was really good at her job –of course. I wasn’t doing well mentally and I hadn’t realized how cynical and negative I’d become.

Who was this person? How could I ever come back to the “real me”? The me who was like sunshine? The me who laughed and had fun, the me who was nauseatingly positive.? How do I get her back?

Then I came across this quote. I hadn’t actually watched this movie, but I found the clip on YouTube and I couldn’t get it out of my mind.

Let me ask you something. If someone prays for patience, you think God gives them patience? Or does he give them the opportunity to be patient? If he prayed for courage, does God give him courage, or does he give him opportunities to be courageous?

Original Source: Evan Almighty (2007)

Honestly, I kept seeing this theme in everything. An opportunity to show up differently, what would that look like? An opportunity live the way I’ve always known I was capable of, but was afraid…. what would that look like?

The answer is in seeing opportunities and not misses. As a perfectionist, it is in my nature to spot mistakes and want to ‘fix’ them. So.. I became really good at seeing mistakes and misses. NOW, I wanted to be better at seeing the opportunities. I wanted to start seeing them BEFORE I saw the misses. Would that be possible?

It was months of me thinking about this.

I realized I needed to express…. (this is what I have to do when I become obsessed about something)

I learned expression by action works really well for me !

Also, I love a challenge…..

What would happen if I reframed the way I lived?

That sounded daunting and frankly, impossible. It sounded like I wanted a miracle….

Almost like…. an opportunity to learn how to become the person I want to be.

I started with one day… then, one day turned into two… then three… and now I have the ability to reframe any situation into an opportunity. It’s not always easy, but it takes less mental and emotional work to reframe today than it did that first week. One day, it may even be the ‘default’ way I see things!

Every conversation = an opportunity to get closer… or to distance myself from a person

Every insane work project = an opportunity to learn and teach my team

Every chore I don’t want to do = an opportunity to improve our living space and home vibes… or make them worse

Every meal = an opportunity to make my body feel better… or worse

Every problem = an opportunity to sharpen my decision-making skills

Every insecurity = an opportunity to improve my confidence

Every disagreement = an opportunity to better understand the situation, person and myself

I could go on!! I have turned this into a little challenge for myself and I encourage you to try it next time you are in need of a new perspective.