Opportunity. If life is like a box of chocolates, take your pick!

Life is full of opportunity. Even when it doesn’t feel like it. Especially when it doesn’t feel like it.

So how can you choose and make the most of the opportunities surrounding you every day, if you can’t see or feel them?

Your dreams are a good place to start since they reflect the way you see your waking life and how you feel about it. With a little training, you can learn to look at your dreams from a slightly different angle so that the opportunities that have been invisible to you suddenly come into clear focus.

Here’s an example:

Larelle dreamed she was back at school about to sit a test she hadn’t studied for, and she was worried she wouldn’t pass.

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The first step is to ask, ‘Where’s the opportunity in the dream?’

One opportunity is to ask to be excused the test, and to sit it at a more suitable time allowing for study. Another opportunity is to give the test a go, and see if the right answers come naturally, boosting her confidence. Another opportunity is to walk away from the test, to embrace life’s adventure without needing a certificate.

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The second step is to ask, ‘Which situation, in my life, does this dream remind me of?’

Larelle’s dream reminded her of her new role as a mother. Her baby was born six weeks before her dream, and she was continually feeling under scrutiny by her parents and relatives over how she was handling her baby. She felt like a child herself, being tested by the adults in her life.

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The last step is to apply the opportunities listed in step 1 to the life situation identified in step 2:

Which opportunity would you choose if you were in this position? Larelle chose to walk away from the test and embrace life’s adventure without needing a certificate. Her dream made her realise that she was allowing her parents and relatives to judge her according to their standards and ideals. She chose to learn about motherhood on the job, to gain wisdom through personal experience. She made this easier for herself by doing a dream alchemy practice where she visualised telling the dream teacher she didn’t need to sit any tests, and where she left the school feeling adult, excited and confident about her future.

You can read two more examples here.

Be guided and inspired by these examples to look to your dreams to identify the many opportunities that life offers you. Even when it doesn’t feel like it.

Especially when it doesn’t feel like it. In fact, your life abounds with opportunity, and the choices are all yours.

[Copyright Jane Teresa Anderson, May 2008. Extract. Full version first published as a Dream Sight article.]

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