Why is it that some people recognise opportunities and others don’t?

It seems that successful people around us manage to grab opportunities out of thin air and wring success out of them.

Are you are one of those millions of people around the world who are waiting for an opportunity to take your life to another level.

I have something extremely important to tell you.

Opportunity isn’t going to smash your front door down. You have to be in a position where you are open to opportunities and act on the good ones.

Opportunities come to us in various forms and sizes and often are disguised.

We’ve all faced opportunities in the past, from choosing school subjects, to which College/University to attend, which course to undertake, which career to choose, to life partners and business associates.

In fact, opportunities are staring at you right now and will continue to challenge you in the future.

No period of time in history holds a mortgage of opportunity: it exists in the past, present and future. In fact some of the most successful companies on the planet started in a down turn or recession.

Companies such as

General Motors

Disney

FedEx

Microsoft

There are countless other companies that have been started during downtimes in history.

The new millennium, still very young, holds a vast amount of opportunity for a wider audience than ever before. The early years of this century will determine whether you and your family progress and prosper or whether you become less than effective and, as a result, non-achievers. If you fall into the latter category, you will surely fail to gain the prosperity you desire and deserve.

Opportunities do come across your path. How you handle these opportunities will determine your success or failure.  How you handle lost opportunities, for instance may well be the key to your future.

If you want to get the most out of the opportunities that come you way you must know what to do when you see one; in fact, you really need to know what an opportunity looks like . Quite often they come surprise-packed in the gift-wrapping of something else.

Opportunity knocks. Can you hear it? If you can’t first hear it, you wont open it…it will move on.

I believe it was Milton Berle who once said, “If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door”. A door provides an opportunity for us, that we may walk through to a new phase in life, a new environment and a magnificent future.

Many people approach doors timidly. Others walk right through them. People in the former group wait for an opportunity to knock, but they don’t actually have a personal door to knock on.

Very often these same people have instead built walls- preconceptions about what an opportunity looks like. Opportunities don’t have to be world changing or immense for you to take them.

I remember back when I was serving I had the opportunity to take several courses on Word, Excel and PowerPoint. At the time I didn’t use those programs but still I took the opportunity. Working with those programs was the last thing I ever thought I would be doing but now, years later, I use them on a daily basis.

However, to grasp the new opportunities that will come your way, you must create a new mindset within yourself and within the generations that will follow you.

You must develop a willingness to take risks, to find new ways of putting your dreams into motion, and to challenge the nine-to-five mentality that leaves us prisoner to debt.

If you develop such a mindset, where time becomes a friend rather than a foe, you are heading down the path to success.  

To recognize an opportunity, you will have to:

  1. See the end, not the beginning.
  2. Get and opportunist’s mindset.
  3. Avoid looking for an easy way.
  4. Be prepared for your day of opportunity- because it’s disguised as today.
  5. Make the most of every circumstance.
  6. Grasp it with both hands-i.e. wholeheartedly and passionately.

Now, I have spoken previously about the importance of choosing very carefully who you socialise with and call friends. People who have a can-do and positive attitude tend to have more opportunities come their way.

The same with family, although we can’t really choose our family.  What is of great interest is the immigrants to a country tend to take more opportunities and become greater entrepreneurs than native born people.

In fact in the United States of America immigrants make up 27.5% of all entrepreneurs but only make up 13% of the population. These statistics are represented in many other countries around the world.

Obviously, they don’t have the generational glass ceilings, limiting mindset and many other factors that come into play. What is obvious though, they take the opportunities when they come knocking.

Being unafraid of new opportunities and proactively seeking them out is crucial to long term business and career survival. Those that don’t tend to do this fade away in importance over time.

Conclusion.

The old saying that “opportunities come and go” is so true and unfortunately, most people just let them go.

So many people are waiting for the “Golden Opportunity” in life but close themselves off to the many opportunities that come their way on a regular basis. 

Keep a look out for opportunities and change your mindset towards opportunity.

It’s like the example of the red sports car that your friend bought. You never saw them before but now you see them all the time. 

Take the opportunity to Be Great

David