WHEN OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS

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Sometimes unexpected opportunities come our way when we haven't been looking for them. The immediate thoughts usually are about how this opportunity will change our life. At that point fear might kick in as well as the excitement of new possibilities. The fear statements will talk you out of pursuing the opportunity, basically because it means change. The thought of change usually kicks up fear. You might have heard the expression "fear is your friend". It's true, if you make fear your enemy you will be at odds with yourself. Fear tells you to proceed with caution but it is also that childlike part of yourself that doesn't understand why things are changing. If, as a child, you were exposed to sudden and unexpected changes, you probably like to keep things as constant as possible. In fact, you might try to control your environment more than a person who never had that kind of experience. An extreme case would be a child who is removed from a parent's home and placed in another home or someone who lost their parents as a child and had to live somewhere else. That lack of security will effect them for the rest of their lives. It's a trauma that most people never fully recover from (I'm not referring to adoption). Generally though, most of us have experienced something unpredictable as a child. Life is uncertain. We had to learn the hard way (as children), that nothing is permanent. Those kinds of changes leave lasting impressions on us and we even experience them in our bodies. When we are faced with the unexpected our bodies react as they did when we were children. There is fear, tension, restriction, constriction and withdrawal.

When the phone rings and presents us with something good or we have a spontaneous encounter that could possibly lead to new and unexpected opportunities, the old patterns of response show up. It's important to know yourself and your own responses in these situations. If you turn down most opportunities because 1) you don't recognize that they are an opportunity or 2) you are terrified of change and uncertainty, then your life will become very mundane and predictable.
The way to overcome this is to stay open. Explore it further, stay open. Don't make any decisions right away, gather as much information as possible before making your final decision, but don't stop yourself from finding out more.