Possibility or Opportunity Today
I often reflect on the turning points, learning and understandings that have impacted my life in profound ways. I will always be grateful for an insight I gleaned from Thomas Leonard years ago while attending a Coachville conference.
The insight that I took away from that conference is the distinction between possibilities and opportunities. This distinction is important because every day we are bombarded with choices, and options. This distinction profoundly changed forever the way I evaluated the options before me.
Possibility in this context is another word for “coulds”. “Coulds” are the things we have the choice to act on. We can also define “coulds” as ideas. We often have lots of “coulds” and feel that we must do something with them or about them. Thomas Leonard made several observations about “coulds” in his e-class series entitled Absence Of You:
- “The word ‘could’ is the past tense of can.”
- “A ‘could’ is something you can do but don’t have to do.”
- “’Coulds’ are a series of things you could do.”
At that time, my “could list” was getting longer every day. I was living in do-do land and the illusion of what could be. I was dabbling in too many things, and did not seem to have the time for what was important to me. I was lacking focus and attention for those things that were most important to me and I was being distracted by the stories of possibilities. The cost of living in the illusion of possibility was very high.
Opportunity on the other hand is something you are drawn to naturally. There’s passion and purpose and it’s less effort to embrace. When you are embracing true opportunities there is an ease and flow that is a natural evolution to this process.
I began living and choosing from a perspective of making the distinction between possibility and opportunity. Things fell off my to-do list and life became less complex and complicated.
Further refinements to the process came later, as I reordered my “to do” list in the following categories:
- Do it (because it moves you closer to your desired end result)
- Do it later maybe (this is the collection place for ideas you don’t want to forget and are not ready to dump. This list provides a way for you to remember so you do not have to commit brain power to this activity).
- Delegate it (We all do some things well and other things not so well. Delegating is a great way to get things done that is not your strong suit and free time up for the things that are your strengths.)
- Dump it (This is where all those coulds, possibilities and stories about should have go!)
Now I routinely ask myself the following two questions on a regular basis:
Is this a possibility or an opportunity? As Thomas had said in the Absence Of You program, “There’s a wide gap between potential "(possibility)"and reality and it takes time/energy/investment to convert potential into reality.” Opportunities in contrast are based in reality. Much of the time, energy and investment have already occurred. We have 3 sources of power in our lives, our time, our money and our energy or life force. If we use these power sources in pursuit of possibility instead of focusing them on opportunity, it’s like swimming against the current.
The second question I like to ask myself is the following one:
Is this choice moving me closer to or further away from my desired end result? Every choice we make moves us closer to or further from what we desire. What will you choose?