Hey, Opportunity, Why Aren’t You Knocking? … The Wonder of Building Something New

7 of 45 Moments of Wonder

Yesterday we talked about ending the striving and just being…and now I want to do the exact opposite and talk about building something? That sounds an awful lot like striving. Well, yes and no.

The wonder of being is that we are enough simply by being. My friend Kelly chose BE as her #OneWord2020 and I believe with all my being that we need to find peace with BEING. But sometimes we also need to work to make things happen. The difference between building something new and striving is that we are not waiting to BE when we are building. We already know we are enough just as we are. We are using who we are and our presence to create something that hasn’t yet existed.

Sometimes when we are leaving something familiar – a job, a team we played for, an activity we were really good at, a relationship or friendship – we look forward and wholeheartedly believe that just because our circumstances, or our location have changed, that opportunities are going to come knocking at our door. How many times as we left 2019 did I see posts about how 2020 was going to be the best year ever. I wonder how many people posting those thoughts (and it is good to look forward with optimism, don’t misunderstand me) considered what they were going to do to make it the best year ever?

When I began this blog in 2018, I thought I was just going to start writing and people would flock to my blog and opportunities would open up before me. Did not happen. What I learned was that I needed to build a new door. I needed to put in the work to deliver something of value. Rather than worrying about how many people saw what I wrote each day, I needed to concern myself with what one person needed to read each day. Just one. I don’t know who, or what their circumstances are, but every day I need to consider that if one person is changed, even for the minutes it takes to read, then I have built my new door.

What opportunities are you waiting for? Has opportunity knocked for you yet? If not, perhaps it is time to consider building a new door.

How curious it is that when we build the door we need, opportunities open up for us that we could never have imagined. The universe has a way of finding the doors that are right for us and knocking loudly on them.

So stop striving. Embrace being. Start building that new door of opportunity. Just don’t forget to open it when opportunity knocks.