Opportunities

How many opportunities in your life are you waiting for someone else to offer?

A position opens. Someone invites you. An option appears right in front of you, and you decide whether to take it.

Those opportunities can be wonderful. But they are not the only ones available.

You can find opportunities. You can also create them.

When I began thinking about these three categories, I saw my own life differently. I could see what had been offered to me, what I had discovered, and what I had built that did not exist before.

Your thinking is part of the opportunity

I recorded this episode in Bora Bora, a place I had wanted to visit for years.

I could sit beside the ocean, enjoy the view, and work on my business and content. I loved having work I could do from anywhere.

That experience made me think about the opportunities in my life and the ones I had helped create for others.

When I looked up the definition of opportunity, it focused on an occasion or circumstances that make something possible.

I think we need to include thought patterns.

Someone can have extraordinary circumstances and never turn them into an opportunity because of how they think about them.

The circumstances matter. So does the thinking that lets us interact with them.

Presented opportunities: what others put in front of you

Many early opportunities are presented to us.

We can attend school, play a sport, learn something, or meet certain people. Someone puts an option in front of us, and we choose whether to participate.

Sometimes a presented opportunity is a beautiful match for what we want. It can lead to an amazing, satisfying life.

But if we only consider the options presented to us, our view can become narrow.

We may never ask what else we could discover or create that would be more aligned with our desires.

Found opportunities: what you discover for yourself

As a child, I loved horses and wanted to ride and spend time on a ranch.

A friend told me about Buck Norred Ranch, where she had rented horses. I asked my mom to take me.

I eventually worked there for years as a trail guide and helping with the horses. That led to more riding, horse shows, and trips.

It was an opportunity I found and pursued.

Pickleball became another found opportunity much later. I had not known it would become a passion or part of how I identified myself.

Once I discovered it, I wanted to play, learn, meet people, and create more time for it.

You cannot know in advance every experience that will interest you. There may be something you have not even thought to consider.

Created opportunities: what you bring into existence

My career and The Life Coach School are examples of opportunities I created.

I put the work together in a way that was unique and created something extraordinary for myself.

In a company, you might wait until a promotion or position becomes available. Another possibility is to think of a position the company could use and present that idea.

You are not only deciding among existing options. You are using your mind to create a new one.

When you look back at your life, which opportunities did you discover? Which did you create? Which were offered?

Notice your pattern of interacting with possibilities.

Review what you could not see before

You may also notice opportunities you turned down or did not see at the time.

When I was younger, I denied myself some opportunities because I did not believe in myself. I was afraid of failing, spending too much money, or not being good enough.

Looking back can help us recognize how our thinking limited what we considered.

I have also wondered about opportunities I simply did not know to explore, such as helping my children become bilingual when they were young.

The point of looking back is to become more conscious moving forward.

What did you not know to look for? What possibilities might you be overlooking now?

Expand the options in your view

In my Reinvention course, we examined how few possibilities people considered when choosing their lives.

Even a question like your favorite color often brings up only a dozen familiar choices.

We can approach our lives the same way: a small set of options in our viewfinder, with many others never considered.

As I talked with my sons about their lives, I wanted to help them think beyond what most people were doing.

What could they create that no one had presented to them?

We can ask that at any age, even when we have invested heavily in a particular direction.

There may be different opportunities within the life we have built. There may also be possibilities outside it.

Let new interests be part of your evolution

Some things I once felt passionate about stopped being as interesting to me.

That can feel disorienting when you thought the interest was part of who you were.

You can think you have lost something and are now less than you were. Or you can ask what the next opportunity is.

What lights you up now?

Travel helped me explore how people in different places lived, thought about happiness and pain, and approached relationships. I wanted to learn from those differences.

As I reflected on turning fifty, I felt more possibilities opening up rather than only fewer options ahead.

Your next phase does not have to be limited to the familiar opportunities people associate with your age or identity.

Give yourself an hour to brainstorm

I recommend setting aside an hour to consider opportunities.

Be willing to be outrageous and excited. Think of different places to live, work you could do, businesses you could create, or experiences you could have.

In Reinvention, we explored possibilities such as becoming a realtor, teacher, or fitness coach.

Then notice where you feel desire and excitement.

Your health, energy, money, and experience affect the opportunities available to you. We do not all have equal opportunities.

But do not limit your exploration only to what you already do comfortably or well. That can keep you from seeing something new.

Creating an opportunity can create one for someone else

Building my business also created jobs, contracts, and opportunities for the people who worked there.

It let me create experiences for my children and their friends, including sending my son and his friends to Japan as a graduation gift.

Most importantly to me, this work creates opportunities to think differently.

Someone may begin liking themselves more or considering a life they had not imagined before.

Being an example of what is possible has been one of the joys of my life.

I am grateful for the people, especially women, who created rights and freedoms before me. We still have work to do toward greater freedom and equality.

While doing that, I also want to appreciate and explore the opportunities available now.

Look at what has been presented to you. Consider what you could find. Ask what you could create.

Your options may be much larger than what is right in front of you.