Opportunity Cost. It’s a basic business term defined by The New Oxford American Dictionary as “the loss of potential gain from other alternatives when one alternative is chosen.”

When you live your life with everything planned out to the Nth degree, you close off other opportunities that could come your way. You miss out on things you can never know about because of your choices.

I used to think I was pretty smart about getting things done as efficiently as possible. The downside of being so efficient was the experiences I missed that could have enriched my life in exciting ways.

I might have met someone who taught me about rock climbing and the joy of sitting atop a steep rock face. Maybe I would have learned to play the violin and experienced the mesmerizing effect the instrument has on an audience, or I could have been exposed to writing code for a super secret project at a tech company.

Today I choose to allow things to occur rather than plan and schedule them. I spend my time thinking about what I want, NOT how to make it happen.

When you choose what you want, a goal, an experience of some kind, it is usually accompanied by thoughts of how to make it happen. When you pick a particular direction, the other options are automatically eliminated. Because we don’t have perfect knowledge of anything, there could be a better way, and we wouldn’t know it.

The power of your thinking is so incredible that you don’t need to spend valuable effort on how to make things happen. By allowing the outcome to occur, you let the universe deliver it in the best way for you.

How does the universe do that? It takes its direction from your thoughts. That’s why it is so important to think about what you want. You’re giving instructions to the universe to deliver your desire.

Sounds crazy, but that’s how it works.