Subscribe via RSS‘OPPORTUNITY SEIZED is imperative. This essential practice accesses evidence. Acknowledging ‘What’s been recognized’, we apply ‘I’m active’ to forward desire.’…CONSTRUCT DevelopmentConversation, QuintessentialYou Design
How do you know opportunity when it shows up? Recently, I have had a lot of discussions about this question. As it turns out, many people I have spoken with express a kind of malaise and mediocrity with respect to choices made. Even more interesting, it appears that the experience of ‘ho hum’ occurs more often with opportunities taken than with those left behind. This phenomenon raised my curiosity so I hung out with the question: ‘What’s not been recognized?’ with respect to this and of course, an answer that is very satisfying to me arose. See what you think or better still, what answer arises for you.
Being that we live in a culture in which we have a myriad of choice and access to much of what we want, we find a way to get exactly that. It seems wonderful until we look a little deeper below the surface. There we find that this very access has essentially killed off something much more precious. It has masked our experience of pure desire, that exquisite necessary component that defines our yearning and creates an outline in which right expression is recognized.
I call this the distinction between form and expression. It is critical in explaining why we so often find ourselves less than excited about an opportunity taken. It equally has us understand why one opportunity thrills us and another leaves us deflated. For the most part, we seek out and are influenced by expression – a kind of ‘filled-in’ completion or result. We think we got what we coveted. We might be influenced by trends, pressure, prestige, status or our neighbors, friends, and family. Alternatively, we might be seeking to fix a problem or steer away from a nagging situation. The bottom line is that we have found something that fits the bill and meets the criteria devised by expectation. We breathe a sigh of relief assuming we have made the grade until at some future point, when we are in the midst of the circumstance, condition, or thing to which we have said ‘yes’, wondering how the heck we got here. Sound familiar? Rest assured, every one of us has had the experience if we are willing to look just that little bit below the surface. In big things and small ones, this occurs over and over again. We incessantly pick expressions without considering form.
Think of it this way. Faced with multiple options we pick from what is in front of us never having distinguished the essential elements that must form what we choose. Form gives us an outline and definition, a context and structure for reference. It is the container for our experience and vision – our expectancy – inside which expression finds its home.
When we have distinguished this outline and definition, we are blessed with clarity and ease, expectancy versus expectation. We understand and can articulate the elements that are essential. With Form distinguished, right Expression is recognized. Herein lies the difference between opportunity taken that could have just as easily been forfeited and Opportunity Seized, actively forwarding pure desire. Distinguishing Form gives us a blueprint in which fulfillment finds evolving Expression.
What do you have to say? How do you distinguish Form and Expression? What’s the blueprint for your perfect Opportunity Seized?
I wonder if the recognition of opportunity and imagination share the same neural circuits? Opportunity takes us to a place of possibility which has more substance than the trance we are in when we live an habituated life. The stretch, perhaps, is to see opportunity in absolutely every second of our lives and fill our days with it.
What are days for?
Days are where we live.
They come, they wake us
Time and time over.
They are to be happy in:
Where can we live but days?
Ah, solving that question
Brings the priest and the doctor
In their long coats
Running over the fields.
Phillip Larkin
Mmmm Ron ~ I like the bringing together of imagination and opportunity. That is appropo! Being that imagination and desire are inextricably linked, we might think of opportunity as evidence of imagination. In QuintessentialYou Design, we work with nine
practices that cumulatively bring us from imagination through evidence. You can see and feel the process throughout:
ACTIVATION: Desire – Specificity – Certainty
ENGAGING: Being At Ease – Being Observant – Attending To Intuition
ACTUALIZATION: Willingness To Be Surprised – Opportunity Seized – Gratitude Expressed.
Some thoughts on the subject…maybe more.
Opportunity is everywhere all the time, no? Is even a forfeit of opportunity not an opportunity in itself? As abundance is inclusive of everything, does it not also include scarcity?
Kathy, you touch on the conditioning and imprinting of other’s expectations that we somehow seem to adopt as our own. I think this is significant in recognizing what is a true opportunity for ourselves. My struggle has been being “sold” on what opportunity is, and in wanting acceptance I want what I am supposed to “want”. Any opportunity would become my opportunity. I am incredibly good at recognizing opportunity, and after jumping on so many band wagons I am now recognizing more and more what is not MY opportunity.
I used to see opportunity as a circumstance that would guide me to “success” or “happiness”, but what I would experience was stress and exhaustion in doing what “I had too” to “take advantage” of the opportunity. My need for feeling accomplished had me running at everything. I was an extreme opportunist.
Where I see my own evolution moving through now is that opportunity seen is in itself opportunity. Basically it leads to choice as I slow down and look at what opportunity is actually mine or ME. And the one that is actually ME is almost literally ME because only I can create MY opportunity. Not someone else. My natural way of being is my opportunity. Therefore, forfeiting those opportunities that are of other, or a “band wagon” I think I should get on, is acting on, or within my actual opportunity.
This leads to what I recognize as a discomfort in another way as I am being in my own opportunity because it is the epitimy of responsibility and accountability. I can never blame another, or circumstance for failure, or even success for that matter. The alone-ness of supporting my own opportunity feels immense. But I believe making that claim is inevitable in our evolution. We must all make that claim and so realize I AM the place and space for opportunity. Do you ever notice that the true success stories out there are from people who were just being themselves doing what they do normally as their own expression and all of a sudden they get discovered and are recognized? Then people chase the recognized opportunity and try to copy or exploit the “opportunity” revealed? Is this not shadow chasing, completely avoiding their own opportunity?
So to Ron’s point, I do believe imagination is integral to opportunity in play. When is it original, and when is it copied? When is it an effort and when is it an ease of expression? I might venture to say that a “want” is an attempt to copy, to fix and to contain, whereas “desire” is an expression in creation of something new to expand and open up from a fresh newly generating imagination. Is re-imprinting in ourselves other’s opportunity imagination, or conditioning? In search for opportunity, am I forfeiting MY opportunity?
For me opportunity is active as desire expressing.
I like your thinking stream, Pete. In particular, I note your question: ‘Do you ever notice that the true success stories out there are from people who were just being themselves doing what they do normally as their own expression and all of a sudden they get discovered and are recognized?’…. That is precisely what the work of QuintessentialYou Design is all about! Precisely! For as we get to know the Essence of who we each are, we live that Essence in Expression! You speak right into the QuintessentialYou’s tagline…. Express Your Essence. Live Your Expression. And I also like your want/Desire distinction. Is it possible that Want is driven externally while Desire arises internally?
Thank You! for your thoughtful comment!