Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Look Out! You're Surrounded by Infinite Opportunities

We are surrounded by infinite opportunities, limited only by our imagination and our belief systems.

Sometimes it sure doesn’t seem like that, does it? I think the oldest, most helpless and trapped I ever felt was when I was 28, alone with a small child, looking at want ads in the New York Times. I felt like throwing up. I couldn’t see anything I was qualified to do that would pay enough for child care and to live on.

It was a slow climb out of that despair. It could have been a lot faster but I did not know how.

In my courses and coaching sessions I listen to people who feel trapped in a suffocating narrow private reality. Sometimes they have marched along in a rut so long they have worn it into a canyon with walls too high to see over.

I remember how it feels. That’s important. More important is that I know beyond our private limited versions of reality, infinite opportunities wait to be discovered.

This is one of my favorite examples:

What do you think your chances for going to college are if you are a young black kid in the sixties; you live in a public housing project and your dad is in prison?

OK, by some miracle of wonder, you do that. What if you want to play pro basketball too? Yes, it’s happened. But what if you are 5 feet 3 inches tall and weigh 136 lbs?

Muggsy Bogues did! His career spanned 13 years with 5 different teams. He won a place in the NBA Top 20 for career assists. In a remarkable view of reality, a unique perspective all his own, he noticed – the basketball spends a lot more time on the ground than it does in the air.

I love to see people break out of poverty, or a rut, pain, or hopelessness. I love to see people who have achieved that blast out new adventures they never dreamed possible.

I’ve helped welfare mothers, an Olympic coach, drug addicts, a Hollywood director, illiterate adults and best-selling authors to break out from the beliefs they hold that block happiness and success.

I’ve spoken in prisons and churches and lots of places in between. I never forgot what it is like to look at my future and face a wall that I had no idea I created myself.

In February I’ll return to my beloved NYC to train coaches as part of a team of heavy hitters for Michael Neil’s SuperCoach Academy. Who would have thought?

In just over a week, I’ll teach the 8th BREAKOUT Weekend.

I hope Muggsy Bogues’ story and mine help you expand your view of what is possible for you. Opportunities for love, success, happiness and prosperity are infinite; look out, you’re surrounded!

Love,
Mandy

Breakout in Palm Springs? http://tinyurl.com/miraclesps
Recover from experiences in your past that limit you now?
http://tinyurl.com/travellingfree