YOU ARE THE OPPORTUNITY

You receive everything once you realize you don't attract opportunity. You are the opportunity.

People want to help us. They want to support us, celebrate us, pour into us. Maybe I already knew that. But for some reason… I couldn't let them.

When compliments or unsolicited kindness make you feel uncomfortable… something’s wrong. I had to face the fact that the programmed “I’m just independent” mindset ran deeper than simply feeling “off” every time I received something I genuinely wanted.

The silent lie I started believing:

If I was being honest, it’s not just that I struggled to receive. It’s that a small part of me still believed I was never supposed to.

From the outside, I was told I came off as confident, self-assured, and independent.

Majority of the time someone offered support, I defaulted to the thought: “I can do this. I don’t need to bother them.” That mindset got me pretty far until I realized that handling life on your own at 18: kinda really sucks.

It wasn’t until a mentor pointed out that I deserved to feel supported that I finally saw it: my actions no longer looked independent. They looked overextended, exhausting, and unnecessarily heavy.

I realized I was holding myself back from a less chaotic life, a life where I didn’t have to work 100 hours a week just to barely get by (not literally but ykwim), hate myself for failing God over and over, and sacrifice my youth to build the life I wanted.

I had to be honest about the fact that I denied the help because I felt I hadn’t earned it. If I accepted it, deep down I knew I’d be confirming the very fear I spent years trying to silence: that I was a burden.

How subtle moments become lifelong patterns:

That’s the thing about childhood wounds… they don’t always come from chaos. Sometimes they come from subtle rejection.

From feeling like your curiosity was inconvenient. From learning that being low-maintenance earned praise, while vulnerability got labeled as neediness.

So you adapt. You shrink yourself. You smile when you're exhausted. You over-function so no one can say you’re in the way.

Eventually, I realized it wasn’t something I lacked that was holding me back, it was fear. Fear reinforced by the people I surrounded myself with. Fear amplified by an online world built to fuel comparison. Fear now being reinforced, by my actions.

The digital weight we all carry:

According to a 2024 APA survey, 67% of Gen Z say they feel like a burden when asking for emotional support. That number is even higher among trauma survivors and children of emotionally unavailable parents.

Are you surprised? I'm not.

You open social media and get hit with a thousand reminders that someone out there is doing better, looking better, moving faster, thinking smarter. It doesn’t take long before you start questioning your own timing, your decisions, your worth.

You turn to it for quick answers and instant advice, all in the name of "saving time". But when we prioritize speed over depth and validation over discernment, we water down the human experience.

And our psyches know it. Over 30% of Gen Z report feeling isolated, burned out, and depressed (Fortune.com).

Add that to social inadequacy, and you’ve got the perfect recipe for settling. For a life that never quite feels like yours.

God, control & the fear of being seen:

For years, I treated hyper-independence like strength. I thought being self-sufficient was the goal. But what I was really doing was protecting myself from disappointment. From rejection. From being "found out".

And then one day, while reading Matthew 7: “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you.” I realized: You receive everything once you realize you don't attract opportunity. You are the opportunity.

Something about the verse wrecked me. I dreamt about it, saw it at random times in random places for a couple weeks. It wasnt until I had en enlightenent, that the verse began to resonate. I’d spent my whole life waiting for signs, open doors, the "right" timing.

I was waiting for permission, from people, from circumstances and from God.

But believing I was the opportunity meant putting myself in rooms before I felt ready. It meant applying before I thought I was qualified. It meant introducing myself before someone asked.

It meant trusting God with the outcome, and letting go of the pride that said I already knew what His yes would look like. Sometimes, the greatest act of faith is prioritizing action over certainty.

The moment I started showing up not perfectly, not fully healed, but with intention…things began to shift. Slowly. Quietly. But undeniably. This shift changed everything:

In relationships:

I stopped chasing connection I had to constantly earn. I stopped telling myself I could save people that didn't want the help. I stopped confusing consistency with chemistry. I started believing I was worth knowing without performing.

In career:

I stopped second-guessing my value. I started increasing my pricing. At 22, I was a 6 figure earner. Was I scared? Almost everyday. In fact, I made it my goal to show up and face rejection, not succeed. Because I knew any rejection meant redirection. I showed up like a 6-figure earner would.

And the goal was to show up. Most people don’t even do that. They’re paralyzed by the same fears I used to be.

And in how I treat myself:

I stopped overcompensating. I let rest be part of the process, not a reward for exhaustion. I let my identity be rooted in truth, not performance.

Imposter syndrome doesn’t die in your mind. It dies in your movement.

It dies in your discipline. It dies in your evidence. It dies every time you show up, when the old you would've stayed hidden.

And you’ll receive everything you were praying for the moment you stop rejecting what’s already in front of you.

If this resonated with you, you’re not alone and you don’t have to walk this journey by yourself.

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Journal Prompts:

• What belief keeps you from showing up fully?

• Where in your life are you waiting for permission?

• What would it look like to take one small action, trusting that you are the open door God wants to use?