Things not going your way? It might just be your biggest opportunity...

I often gets my clients to write their story, an honest account of what got them to where they are. It’s something that has incredible impact and today I sat down and wrote mine. As I was writing it I had a realisation that some of the biggest obstacles I have faced have been my biggest opportunities. They have often got me to completely change direction and to start opening up that there might be a different future ahead than the one that I thought was best for me. That is the thing about the Universe, it is far more intelligent than we will ever be.

Who hasn’t sat there and worked out what they want to happen and been rigidly attached to it. To default to pushing and hustling your way to exactly where you want to be and to then feel utterly pissed off when it just doesn’t work out the way you want it to.

I want to tell you a story about me that you might be able to resonate with. I was working in my corporate job and I knew I wanted to upgrade my life - a higher salary, greater leadership, doing work I loved, moving house and to attract more prosperity. I decided that the only way to do this was in the context of my job at the time - the thought that there were other ways to do it never even crossed my mind.

So I sat down and mapped out exactly what pay rise I would need to be given at work and for what role and then set about controlling it happening. Not once did I ever think about whether it would give me what I emotionally wanted - the freedom, the impact, the sense that I had really achieved something. There was absolutely no surrender and openness to other possibilities - I had committed the number one faux pas when it comes to co-creating with the Universe. I had asked for what I wanted and then become completely blindsided by the HOW it would happen. 

As such it became all about the controlling the outcome, being totally fixated on the way it would happen and to closely monitor the progress along the way. I started to get way more responsibility at work, amazing reviews, job titles were changed, pay rises were discussed and agreed and then my review happened and nothing. No big pay rise. No big change. So I continued pushing, striving, controlling, convincing and then another two years and two reviews - still no massive pay rise. After three years of trying I felt defeated and it ended up with a total sob fest in a meeting room with one of my work friends. I felt frustrated and defeated and totally annoyed that it wasn’t happening. I was angry with everybody that despite how hard I was trying it just wasn’t coming to life the way I wanted it to.

It is now that I look back that the Universe was giving me all the things I wanted but not in the way I thought they should look. It was trying to get me to open up and to teach me lessons. For me to learn that I didn’t get to decide the how [that is not our job] and that it is not about controlling and striving but trusting and surrendering.

I didn’t see that the Universe had greater things in store for me. The more I got blocked from my pay rise the more anxious and miserable I became and it wasn’t until I got signed off from work [for basically being on the brink of some sort of breakdown] that I realised that the answer wasn’t in external validation and that I had been trying to control a situation that wasn’t ever going to make me happy - no matter how big the pay rise. I just wasn’t meant to be in that world anymore, I was supposed to be out there helping people and that is where the path to my riches [in all aspects] lay.

This Universal de-tour has been astonishingly awesome and I never saw it coming. I had to stop [or be forced to] and open up. To get out of my own way. To stop trying to control everything and to trust and surrender that there was a plan far greater than mine.

So today I write this blog so that you can look at your challenges in a different way. I hope it helps you to release and let go and to stop the resistance we have to something unexpected and even better coming our way.

My top 5 tips for turning challenges into opportunities:

1. Be honest with yourself. Are you trying to control outcomes and if so why? Is it based on a fear that if you don’t things won’t go right? Are you being true to what you really want or simply pushing forwards based on the limitations you have told yourself are in place?

2. When have set backs in the past put you onto something better? Is it being dumped and then ending up with someone much more right for you? Not getting a job offer and then a better opportunity coming your way? Having a really hard time and it then being a chance to rebuild yourself on different foundations?

3. Practice saying this statement “I offer up my agenda and trust that there is a plan far greater than mine”

4. Are there other creative ways you can look at this challenge? Other ways of thinking about how you can create the life you want? What are the signs trying to show you? Do you think you might be getting blocked for a reason and what are your lessons in that? Are you open to things coming your way that are different from the way you thought they should look?

5. Be clear with the Universe and remember this is about co-creation and not control. Clearly state what you would like to attract into your life, be grateful for it and then forget about the how. Surrender that it will come at the right time and in the right way and be open to the many ways this might look.

I leave you with a story of a client of mine from last week. She was fixated on manifesting £45k into her life so she could leave her corporate job and get her business off the ground. She decided the only way to do this was through redundancy packages and she went about exploring opportunities. Redundancies were soon announced and she was sure she had cracked it. Then nothing - she was not eligible and slunk into feeling of total despondency that it was not the right path for her and that her dreams could never really happen.

Applying all of the above things soon changed for her. A month later an email that she would usually just filed off grabbed her attention - she had some shares in the company she had forgotten about. She then went home and her husband had been given a big pay rise and some other money had come in. The sum of these unexpected amounts, just short of £45k. The lesson? Things don’t always come exactly how we think they will but trust and be open to other possibilities and things might turn out better than you ever thought.