TRANSFORMATIONAL OPPORTUNITIES
by
William Cottringer


Your spiritual growth and well-being depend upon your sensitivity to distinguishing between moments of danger vs. moments of opportunity. Taking advantage of moments of opportunity helps you move forward in your journey, while succumbing to moments of danger takes you backwards. Unfortunately these moments are often disguised and easily mixed up.

How do you determine whether to do this or do that? Often there is an internal battle going on—your head is in favor of backing one alternative, while your heart prefers the other. Sometimes there is a green light flashing in your heart while a red flag is being raised in your head. Your choice is usually a result of the part that dominates the landscape at the time—your head or your heart.

The confusion comes into play when you mix up thoughts and feelings. Sometimes these two things get so tangled up that you can’t tell which is causing which or when one stops and the other starts. At that point, the only way to undo the pretzel is to find the logical beginning.

Even in the most difficult, complex ethical dilemma, there is really only one simple rational question your head needs to be asking. This is: What choice will be more difficult to make and carry out now, and do me the most good in the long run? It is then when your heart needs to get behind that choice to make it work. Any other action is confusing danger for opportunity.

There are two critical moments of opportunity in life to get your head and heart working together to make the right choice—one which will transform the quality of your life for the better and bring you the genuine joy, peace, understanding and contentment you want and need. These are: (1) discovering your calling, and (2) loving unconditionally. Fortunately, these opportunities keep reappearing until you finally take advantage of them.

DISCOVERING YOUR CALLING

You are born into this life challenged to accomplish a unique mission. You are also given a special talent to be successful in carrying out this mission. Discovering your private “calling” and accompanying talent, is always a major transformational experience that improves the quality of your life from that point on. It is a peak experience that makes most others seem trivial.

Uncovering both your mission and talent can be a difficult, life-long quest. Such important information is often hidden where you least expect to find it—right under your nose. A big clue is in paying closer attention to the things in life that are probably breaking God’s heart—maybe the things He doesn’t want or expect to happen as a result of giving us the right of choice in free will. There are plenty of mistakes, accidents, inequities and tragedies all around you that are causes worth correcting by following the call of committed passion.

Another clue to discovering your calling may be in recognizing what you already do most, enjoy most and are best at doing. We are often already three-quarters to the place we are going before we begin to recognize where we are headed. When in doubt about your calling and talent, you can always ask a close friend, mentor or family member who has the benefit of an objective, outside vantage point of seeing you.

Even when you discover your special calling, it may not be easy to follow. It may not pay enough, it may threaten to re-arrange your whole life, it may require huge, uncomfortable sacrifices and more than anything—it may not be what you want or expect.

However, when you recognize this as a moment of great opportunity for both spiritual growth and human satisfaction, you will make the choice that is harder to make now, but will do you the most good in the long run. You are saving for your future which will be here before you know it.

LOVING UNCONDITIONALLY

Unconditional love is a desirable human ideal few achieve, because it is so difficult to do. It runs counter to our human nature of expecting certain outcomes from our efforts. We have been brainwashed into believing that we can get what we want if we just work hard and clever enough in doing all the right things to deserve a reward. This is especially true in seeking and giving love in personal relationships.

If we learn to fight fair, then we expect the other person to learn how to do that too. If we make an effort to stay attractive by exercising and eating sensibly, we expect our partner to do the same. If we have the courage to communicate through a difficult conflict, we expect our mate to be willing to do that too. Even if we love someone unconditionally, we expect it back in return, which ironically is one very big condition.

Sooner or later though, this equation breaks down and our efforts fail to deliver the promise. The harder we try the less we succeed. It becomes very uncomfortable brick wall to the point of being maddening. The only relief comes when we realize that it is time to rethink the rules of the game. Something isn’t right.

Despite the many opportunities that come our way to make a major spiritual leap forward in this area, we hesitate by refusing to give up our habits that keep us from letting go and loving unconditionally. The result—conditional love—is cluttered with personal expectations.

The harder you fight to establish and practice fair expectations of others, the more you expect people to meet those expectations in return. Oddly, they never seem to do that and the relationship drifts into trouble before you know it. Consequently you miss a critical opportunity to develop spiritually and personally, and get what you really want—a mixture of lasting joy, peace, understanding and contentment through the deep emotional intimacy created by unconditional love. You can’t get those things anywhere else.

These two wonderful moments of opportunity will keep coming to you until you finally take advantage of them. Fortunately God has much more patience in these matters than we do. Is such a moment of opportunity unfolding before you right now? Will you make the more difficult choice now that will do you the most good in the long run? Let go of dangerous expectations so your head and heart can relearn to work together to help you make the right choices of opportunity.


William Cottringer is a success coach, college teacher and writer from Collinsville, IL. He is author of You Can Have Your Cheese & Eat It Too. He can be reached at ckurtdoc.charter.net