Golden Rule #8: Be Open to Unexpected Opportunities.

One of my favorites, learned so well and so often! Plans are great, even highly detailed plans. Especially highly detailed plans. There is such value in envisioning where you’re heading and charting a course for actually achieving even your wildest dreams. Everything becomes do-able that way. Everything.

But there are some times when you are presented with an opportunity that doesn’t fit neatly into your “plan” box. What do you do with those? A chance to attend an event, meet a favorite author, visit a long-coveted place, spend time with someone you haven’t seen in far too long. All good things, right? But sometimes opportunities come cloaked in change. And change, for those of us who really, really like things to go according to plan, can be threatening. Unsettling. Scary. Something to be avoided.

But sometimes those opportunities wrapped in change are just what we need to move us closer to where we really need to be. It can be incredibly hard to embrace change when what we really want to cling to is familiarity. But sometimes change is the vehicle that shakes up our thinking and planning and introduces new opportunities to us, things that we would otherwise miss because our gigantic and very complete plans would be in the way.

I love how Dave Robbins puts it:

The end of one chapter in your life only means one thing: The beginning of another chapter. Is the next chapter better or worse than the chapter before it? Only YOU can make that determination, since it is your life and YOU are writing your own life book.

So. When an unexpected opportunity presents itself, and it will, don’t immediately reject it just because you weren’t looking for that thing, or that time, or that place, or that person. Be open to the unexpected!