Chapter 2
Creating Opportunities
There are many questions you might want to ask yourself when seeking out new opportunities. What is important however, is that these opportunities are right for you. Taking on new projects or new ideas without truly thinking them through can lead to frustration, failure to complete and the beginnings of a perpetual cycle. One in which you simply jump on and off the hamster wheel, without fully achieving your great potential.
Another year will have come and gone and although you may have achieved something, is it truly enough? So, how do we successfully navigate the forks in the road that lead to new challenges, some we don’t even know exist yet? Every New Year creates a sense of excitement, bringing with it new opportunities through which we can live, grow, engage and achieve success. If only we would take the time to find them or better still, create them.
In 2018 Mike and I married. It was during this time I decided to retire and we began looking for a new home in Bridlington on the East Yorkshire Coast a beautiful part of the country, where countryside meets the sea. All this and with a beautiful coast line, amazing walks and even more amazing sunsets literally on our doorstep, our lives would be positively changed forever.
So, I retired and we moved to Bridlington in July 2020 at the height of the pandemic. Moving to the coast I thought would present new opportunities to develop my passion for writing, but I lacked the drive, with personal motivation being in short supply.
To kickstart my new life I searched for new ideas that I thought would help me on my journey to publishing my first book. Record how you spend your time to the very last detail declared one book, and so I wrote down to the very last detail, what I did for a full week. Was it really that simple by committing to writing for 15 minutes every day, writing a thousand words, editing and re-editing that I could write my first book within a matter of weeks? Well it didn’t happen then. But it did happen, when the catalyst was strong enough and the time was right.
As we move towards the end of 2023 and open the door to 2024, is it all too much in the depths of winter to seek out new challenges and new ideas? Does starting the New Year fill you with a sense of having failed to achieve any of your ambitions, that you are still in that rubbish job, you still dislike your boss and are sick and tired of being held back. Or are you ready for something different?
This month I decided to make an inventory of everything I have ever wanted to do, but never have, and all the things I could do, if I would only commit; but how on earth would I find the time to do everything I wanted to do and how do I prioritise? Do I need to? Once I had completed this self-imposed task I then chose just one thing to start and I broke it down into tiny steps. My goal? You’ll find out later.
Every year brings new opportunities; opportunities through which we can live, grow, engage with others and achieve our potential. Finding or creating those opportunities though can be daunting. Despite our best intentions, it can all appear simply too much.
Do you wish you had acted sooner, but think there’s really no hope now of doing anything different? In a few years the kids will have flown the nest, become employed, gone to university, settled down and had their own family? And then it will be your time. Why should you give up what you have now? It may not be the most exciting of lives, but the job’s fine, it keeps the wolves away from the door. It pays for the bills, those long-awaited holidays you have, and allows for a few treats along the way. You’re happy enough. Life isn’t really so bad, is it?
But in all honesty, are you simply exhausted by the promises you keep making to yourself each year that things will be different, because you’ll make them different. You’ll find a job where you’re listened to; you’ll develop that hobby you’ve always wanted, but when it comes to the end of the year, it ends the same way it started. Nothing ever truly changes, unless you are willing to make the changes necessary. So, please this year, don’t let life carry you along on the crest of a wave. One thing is for sure, the hours, the days the weeks, months and years will come and go and what happens in between will simply add, or not, to the rich tapestry of your life, one that you can proudly share, or hide in a cupboard. It’s up you. Only you can decide.
