When you have a choice to make, do you think about what will happen in the future if you decide to do it? For example…

• When moving to a new house, you imagine how your life will be living there, seeing yourself enjoying the place fully.
• You have a job possibility and visualize how you will like it, how much money it might bring in, and how your career can unfold from there.
• A new person comes into your life, and you fantasize about creating your life with him/her and how wonderful that could be.

If this is your typical way of making decisions, you’re not alone! It’s what most people tend to do. Yet, what if in doing so, you’re actually stopping what is truly possible?

In all of these cases, you’re seeing the potential, not the possibilities. What’s the difference?

Potential is a conclusion, and thus a limitation. It’s seeing what you think can—or should—happen in a situation. You can decide that the potential of the living situation, job, or relationship is wonderful, but your vision is still a limitation on what could be, if you chose for greater possibilities. After all, anything you can imagine is a limitation on the infinite possibilities that are truly available.

Possibilities come from being completely in question. As an infinite being, you have infinite choice and infinite possibilities. When you come to a conclusion, decision, or judgment, nothing that doesn’t match those can come into your life, so you avoid the possibilities. Accessing your infinite possibilities requires staying out of the conclusions of what you think should or could happen.

So what helps you access the possibilities instead of making decisions based on the potential?

1. Stop rejecting the gift of possibility

Any time something doesn’t fit the way you think it should be, you will reject it. Let’s say you have been asking for more money to show up, and then get laid off from your job. Going into the wrongness of being laid off is rejecting the possibilities that it may herald. If you’re living from someone else’s reality, only what fits that reality can show up. You don’t have choice and you cut off the gift of possibilities.

Tool: Be in question

When you notice that you are rejecting something because it doesn’t fit what you thought it should look like, acknowledge that and then go into question. “Wow, that that showed up different than I thought it would! What else can I choose now?” Another question you could ask is, “What is the possibility here?” When you ask a question (that is actually a question), you create a multitude of possibilities.

2. Choose for Possibility

Possibility is an energy you perceive, not a vision you can see. If you can see the future that will be created if you make a choice, then you are looking at the potential of a situation, not the possibilities. Remember, when you choose for possibility, it’s not based on what you think it should look like. You will have no idea what it will look like! Instead of relying on your vision or imagination turn toward your awareness. You perceive the possibilities as an energy in your body.

Tool: Live in ten-second increments

When you live in ten-second increments, you have to be present and keep choosing. With every choice, ask, “What will this choice create?” You’re not looking for the answer or the potential, but for the awareness of the possibilities it will create in your life. Keep living in question and choosing in ten-second increments, and since every choice creates, your possibilities continue to expand.

When you notice that you’re living from the limitation of potential, remember the tools of living in ten-second increments and being in question. Come out of your conclusions about how the future will unfold and choose for the infinite possibilities that are available to you.

The blessing of possibilities is the possibility of something you have never even considered.

To learn more about living from the blessing of possibilities, check out Gary Douglas’s new book, Blessed Possibilities.