Yes To All Opportunities


    Anouk Griffioen, Navigating the Imaginary (detail), charcoal drawing, 2016.

Saturday morning. The breakfast table is still the way it was an hour ago. One kid got helped out of the house for his swimming class. Second kid is here with me, half-dressed, half-naked. He is wearing a jumper but didn’t quite make it into his pants. He got distracted by a broken Lego bus.

It is the perfect moment to not dress a kid, to not clear the table but to get my laptop out and write. Laundry upstairs? Can’t see it. No, I haven’t showered yet, in case you wonder.

Last night was exhausting, as our youngest kept waking us up due to severe ear pain. After some instances, I didn’t bring him back to his own bed anymore. Husband opted for the downstairs couch.

So yes, I do feel tired. Yes, there are household tasks that are trying to get my attention. I don’t allow them to distract me.

I decide not to wait for the perfect conditions to work on my stuff – I love to write – but to just push aside some stuff on the couch, to open my laptop and start. The background noise of my youngest playing his Lego? Let’s just enjoy it.

Opportunities are everywhere, as long as we take them. Opportunities have nothing to do with perfect or with the way we think they should be presented to us. Opportunities are about a small pocket of relatively quiet time on a messy Saturday morning.

Many more opportunities have come my way over the last week. A friend and yoga teacher offered me to sell my books at her studio. Perfect opportunity. She sold a couple of copies during the first class: yeah! Then she invited me to speak in her studio about my book. Yes, of course! All perfect.

As soon as we allow our brain to kick in and start to judge the opportunities that are right in front of us, we get ourselves into trouble. It might go something like this: Why is it that this magazine does ask me for an interview and that national newspaper Trouw still hasn’t responded to me after I had sent them the book? They should have by now!

Stinky thinking alarm. Time to apply some mental hygiene here. If we are not honouring ourselves and the momentum that we have created for ourselves, we are not doing ourselves a favour. We need to shift.

So yes to speaking gigs around the corner. They do bring me closer to my goals. Yes to the interview invite from the Dutch women’s magazine Happinez. How exciting! And yes to every other oportunity that is being presented to me right here, right now. I love them all.

Back to you. Have you detected all the incredible opportunities that have been coming your way lately? What was your response? No worries if you’ve let them go by and haven’t acted on them this time. Every day, there are plenty of new ones to be embraced. Enjoy!

If you want to read more about all the opportunities that are available for you on a daily basis, order a copy of my new book ‘Als een luchtballon op een reuzenrad botst. Gids voor een betekenisvol leven’ and get yourself on track. Only available in Dutch at the moment. The English edition ‘Living Bravely. Gateway To A Meaningful Life’ is expected to be out this fall.