What Are Opportunities?
Opportunity is a word that inspires us. It signifies a favorable time, condition or circumstance to have a meaningful experience, better a situation, achieve a goal or improve life. It creates hope. Opportunities can be described as positive, numerous, being created around us continuously. They are also temporal, with some opportunities achievable and others lost as time marches forward and destroys them. The dynamics of opportunities are complicated, taking advantage of them even more so.
The Challenges with Life’s Opportunities
What are the complexities and dynamics of life opportunities? Why can’t we all take advantage of the opportunities that seem to appear right in front of us? These are the ones we pursued and missed or the ones we thought we still had ahead of us in life, but in fact are now gone. How can we be more successful finding, pursuing and realizing them?
I’ve listed some of the complexities and challenges we all face with life’s opportunities below.
Opportunities may be:
1. Unrecognizable – They are elusive and you may not recognize them because they take various shapes and forms.
2. Unexpected – They may arrive quickly, unexpectedly and have a short lifetime, like a meteorite, here for a brief moment and then gone.
3. Implicit – They may lie dormant as hidden opportunities, almost invisible, awaiting someone to create them.
People may be:
1. Distracted – We may not realize that we’ve just come across an opportunity because we’re so heads down in the daily grind of life, with work or life issues.
2. Unprepared – We don’t plan for the possibility of opportunities, so even though we see them, we aren’t prepared to pursue them, maybe due to lack of bandwidth, resources or bad timing.
3. Ineffective – We may not effectively use our strength and resources or other people’s strengths and resources to fully exploit opportunities.
4. Unmotivated – We don’t have the attitude or are not willing to do the hard work it most often takes to make opportunities a reality; opportunities are not usually free.
In spite of the above reasons that plague us all, there are many folks who do pursue opportunities effectively that have changed their lives and the lives of many around them. What do they do differently? What can we do to prepare and position ourselves to take better advantage of opportunities when they present themselves?
6 Steps to Take Better Advantage of Opportunities
Create Opportunities
There is no better way to prepare yourself and align your timing with opportunities than to create the favorable conditions for them. Think about the future you.
What experiences would you like to have? Are their environments you’d like to be in ? Do you have goals you want to achieve? What do you want your life to look like?
Here are some examples of future you thinking:
Example 1
1. Future you: I want to travel the world.
2. Opportunity Creation: Become an expert in the travel industry, join travelling clubs, seek out jobs that allow you to experience the world now, volunteer for aid organizations that travel to remote lands.
Example 2
1. Future you: I want to launch a software development company.
2. Opportunity Creation: Take advanced software development courses, get involved with software clubs and hackathons, seek out software development networking events on Meetup or Eventbrite.
Seed your opportunity space. Set up favorable conditions for the spark of an opportunity to explode. Create opportunities for opportunities to flourish.
Think Out of The Box
People, particularly as they get older, tend to become trapped in their current thinking patterns as they maintain familiar routines and habits. This may stifle our ability to take advantage of new opportunities.
Want to break out? Start new habits, new routines and experience different things. Ask all kinds of questions about the world around you because it was created by people just like you. You live in it, it’s not perfect and you have the ability to create a different world.
Intentionally look for problems to solve. Keep an eye out for things that are difficult and find ways to make them easier. Identify things that can be made better and for constraints that don’t need to be. Figure out how you can change things that you had previously considered constants and make them variables. Look for solutions which are not obvious, but are instead completely unintuitive.
If you have a bad experience at the doctor’s office, ask why, learn from it and how you might be able to make that experience better. If your product breaks after you just bought it, figure out how you can make it dramatically better…..and then return it! If you have a relationship problem, be the one that takes the first step to solve it. Be an out of the box thinker.
Talk to Lots of People
Network network network. It’s kind of like location location location in real estate. Networking is one of the most important things you can do to open up new opportunities. Why? Because people are smart, but many people are smarter. People love to share ideas and perspectives and they are willing to help you out.
Not only are groups of people networking dynamic and fun, but sometimes you‘ll find like-minded folks who will partner with you. There is tremendous power in diversity of thought and perspective and certainly power in numbers.
Prepare Yourself
Prepare yourself mentally and physically for a lot of hard work. Opportunities are not always easy. Be passionate about opportunities and about how the future possibilities may change your life and the lives of others.
Size up and prepare for possible opportunities. Try to develop expertise in your opportunity space. That might allow you to roughly predict their arrival. Determine if opportunities are aligned with your life. I’ve seen too many folks get crushed by jumping on the first opportunity that presented itself, only to find out it wasn’t right for their specific life situation.
Assuming a green light, begin preparing yourself emotionally, relationally, logically, spiritually, financially, and physically. Prior to the arrival begin preparing your greatest strengths to conquer it.
Be careful though, sometimes we’re meant to leverage our greatest weaknesses against an opportunity for the express purpose of developing new strengths. Don’t give up just because you aren’t an expert or the opportunity seems too far-fetched. Don’t underestimate yourself.
Work Hard and Persevere
Once the opportunity presents itself and you’ve decided to pursue it, commit to it and exert the needed investment and force to achieve it. If you aren’t on fire passionate about the opportunity, drop it or risk failure. Achieving most opportunities isn’t easy, but you’ll find them less intimidating if you overwhelm them with extreme passion, organization, and perseverance.
Do you recall the core military doctrine used to launch the attack against Iraq? It was called “Shock and Awe.” This doctrine is based on the use of overwhelming power, unparalleled battlefield awareness and maneuverability, and dramatic enough displays of force to overwhelm the enemy and eliminate its will to fight. Engage your opportunity using a similar show of peaceful but explosive force.
Maintain Balance
Keep in mind that just because you’ve conquered an opportunity doesn’t make you successful. Just because you’ve been fiercely focused on achieving it, doesn’t mean you can lose sight of the rest of your life and your relationships, family, friends, employees, integrity, humility, health, fitness and energy.
You need to integrate the opportunity into your life and celebrate it. Don’t ignore those around you that you love, don’t disengage from relationships, don’t consume all your finances, don’t forgo your values, don’t burn bridges and don’t burn out. In other words don’t spend yourself to zero to achieve the opportunity. Allow sufficient resources to maintain a healthy, balanced and passionate life.
I hope this helps you take advantage of opportunities in your life!
