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Out of the ordinary, great opportunities can emerge.  But will we see them when they do?

By Alex Canfor-Dumas

Connors is having a bad day.  He's having the same bad day that he had yesterday and the day before.  Phil Connors has discovered that for him, no matter how hard he tries or wishes it otherwise, every day that he wakes up in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, USA, it's always the second of February: Groundhog Day.

In the film Groundhog Day, Phil Connors is a bored, cynical, world-weary TV weatherman. It's his fourth year running, he's tired of his job, resentful of his bosses and bored. And that might sum it up for a lot of people, because in the mundane world of daily routine and habitual response, every day might have a different name and date, but seem, well, just like yesterday and pretty similar to tomorrow as well.

Who hasn't sometimes felt like Phil, that 'it's always 2 February and there's nothing I can do about it'? 

Take my neighbour Tess.  She looks around her and sees a big boring world - her world anyway.  Shakespeare said: "All the World's a stage./ And all the men and women merely players".  'In that case,' said Tess, 'I'll sack my agent because I've been given the wrong part.'

Tess, you see, wants excitement - she wants to be Cleopatra, sailing down the Nile with a cast of thousands, but thinks she's somehow been wrongly 'cast' in the walk-on role of spear-carrier.  Everyone else has the best costumes, best sets, best lines.  I suppose what she really means is that, for her, life is just too run-of-the-mill.  What she doesn't realize, though, is that within her steady and conventional life are all the ingredients for change, or that her present 'role' offers the opportunity for learning everything she'll need in her next 'part'.  Tess has yet to discover that she's her own casting director.

But maybe the opportunities that come our way every day - for learning, growing, changing our attitude or fulfilling our potential - can be easy to miss precisely because they are so common-place.

You rush home and excitedly tell your husband/mother/flatmate that today you were actually friendly to and supportive of 'that difficult Mr Wilson in mortgage advice' and that you did 'all the filing before lunch for once', and the response might be something like 'That's nice, but have you seen the tin-opener?'  On the whole, society doesn't applaud our homely achievements.

If we're prone to missing the potential in the predictable, no wonder Phil Connors is having trouble in Punxsutawney. At first he uses the situation to his advantage, knowing he can eat, drink and spend as much as he likes without suffering any adverse consequences.  Soon bored with this and desperate to escape, he attempts suicide in a variety of ways only to wake up each time back at square one.

Phil Connors has reached a crisis.  But it's at this point that he somehow summons forth the courage and wisdom to take the best possible option open to him - to live a full and committed life where he is right now.  At first this new response to his predicament is merely a means to distract himself from his grim reality.  But as he continues to repeat day after day the same actions of helping, supporting and befriending his community, a subtle but remarkable transformation begins to take place.

Suddenly he is the most popular and respected member of the community.  And effortlessly, without any of his former machinations - or expectations of it happening - he is able to attract, like a magnet, the girl of his dreams. Punxsutawney hasn't changed, but Phil Connors has. 

In one sense he has grasped, unconsciously, the concept of "saying yes to your universe".  In her book, Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway, author and psychologist Susan Jeffers advocates this attitude as a way of discovering opportunities in events that seem to impede us or make us unhappy.  As she explains it: 'Saying yes means positive action; saying no means giving up.  We can say "no" to the situation as it is, but "yes" to the possibility for growth it offers.  Saying yes means getting up and acting on your belief that you can create meaning and purpose in whatever life hands you.'

And if we can do that, we might find, like Phil, that deadlocks transform and new doors open.  'Today is tomorrow; it happened!' he says with wonder on waking to discover that 3 February has come at last.

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