While traveling this last week, I experienced a valuable (and humorous) lesson that reminded me to open my eyes.
While my daughter and I were driving across the United States, we wanted to attend church and googled directions to the nearest congregation. Soon we were in a small town and the GPS informed us that we had reached our destination.
Yet, we could not see the church anywhere!
We made another drive around the area only to realize that we had been looking directly at the church house the first time but had not recognized it!
It was an older, white wooden structure with a completely different layout, but because it did not look like the traditional red brick structure that we were used to, we had not seen it!
We had driven right by it because it wasn’t what we thought we were looking for!
Have you realized that in life, you often see only what you are looking for, and experience only what you’re expecting to experience?
How often do our “closed” eyes or our limited expectations shortchange us?
Do you wake in the morning thinking the day will be just like every other day before it? If you do, then it will be. Do you expect your interactions with others to be as they’ve always been? If you do, then they will be.
A simple, yet powerful way of changing our experience is to open our eyes to other possibilities. And not just open them to new possibilities but to actually decide what you want to experience and how you want to feel beforehand. (See my blog post “How Will You Choose to Experience Your Life?” https://www.melaniebnewman.com/staging/9944/will-choose-experience-life/)
When you expect a person to respond the same as always, or a situation to be a certain way, you are shrinking that experience or interaction to be only what you will allow it to be, and may very well miss the new opportunities that experience has to offer.
My daughter and I expected to see a very specific type church building. If we hadn’t looked again with new eyes, we would have missed it, and gone on our way frustrated and unhappy.
Instead, opening our eyes to the possibility of something other than our original expectation allowed us to have a wonderful, experience!
Here’s to opening your eyes to new opportunities and experiences!
With love,
