I’ve been musing on how opportunities present themselves to some people and not to others, and what those people do with them. Many people are sitting on the sidelines in this bad job market, and getting either no job opportunities, or bad ones. Others get job opportunities and (believe it or not) turn them down. The whole “opportunity” concept is really curious to me. It depends on where you live, who you are, and how well you can spot and judge an opportunity when it presents itself.
Cycle Of Life And Opportunity
Some people suggest that if you just network, work hard, and be positive that opportunities will just come knocking at your door. I think we’re seeing that this just isn’t the case, as millions of people are doing just that with their job search and nothing comes of it. There are few jobs and that’s the reality of the situation. It’s like when you want to grow a garden, you have last year’s seeds, and instead of waiting for spring, you plant them in the winter. How much do you expect to reap just because you took the trouble to dig the frozen soil, and plant a seed? Zero, because it wasn’t the right time nor was there an open opportunity, and open door, in that environment. You aren’t going to make the winter spring by thinking positive thoughts. It takes more than that.
The 80/20 Individual
I read this great book: The 80/20 Individual. It talks about how you take the 80/20 concept and apply that to becoming more productive as an individual. In this case, in my interpretation, you should learn how to spot 20% of your opportunities that will yield optimal results and ignore the other 80% as trivial time wasters. The better you get at that, whether it is reducing networking to better connections, applying energy to productive projects, or creating things that produce spectacular income results – you will grow less variety, but you will reap richer rewards and quicker too. It’s working smarter, not harder. It’s understanding that just because an opportunity presents itself, it doesn’t mean that it’s worth your time. That’s why, I believe, that those people getting the most opportunities are also the ones that are turning them down. They are able to spot those that will bear fruit sooner and avoid those that don’t, so they have a track record of success. Others may not produce as much success in their careers as immediate results, simply because they picked the wrong opportunities to work with or the time to fruition is beyond their length of service. They attract opportunities, by virtue of a track record of success, but the opportunity presenting itself isn’t sufficient to generate success. In a way, they create more of what they did before, and that magnetizes a larger vortex of energies, then they have to become very selective.
It’s a case where the individual isn’t the driving force of success, but it’s an understanding that it’s a partnership between those seeds that were sown before, by someone else, and the opportunity of time that now presents itself to be the person that reaps the harvest. It’s a matter of cooperation between various principles in life. Success is never a standalone project. Many others always contributed, but only those at the right place and time get recognized for their contribution, and reap better rewards. Doing that, they magnetize more opportunities in the same direction, but not all of them are guaranteed to yield good results.
Finding Or Creating Opportunities?
I don’t believe an opportunity can be created at the wrong time and I am more and more convinced that we don’t find opportunities, they are attracted to certain people. Whether the opportunity is to make a million dollars or to get mugged, these “open doors” of chance always seem to go to the people who have a track record of being able to produce those results, over and over. It is a combination of who we are (what energies we emanate) and how we are in alignment with our place in the world and history. The person who ends up successful isn’t the one that “makes it happen” but knows exactly how to position themselves to reap the rewards.
Learning To Judge Opportunities
See, I learned long ago to weed out people in my immediate circle who attracted drama and calamity. It just follows them wherever they go and no matter how much you help them, they continue to attract it until something within them changes. They can have spectacular opportunities to change (as a crisis will often provoke), but they fail to take advantage. So, they continue to attract more and more crisis, and it becomes a very bad cycle that continues until something within shifts. Before that happens, they’ve often dragged you down with them too. Should we fail to help those in need? No. However, I am more and more convinced that only 20% of people who actually need help are ready to get it and shift out of their situation. It’s up to us to figure out who those people are as they represent the best return on our investment of time and help.
Now, I don’t believe crisis is always necessary to create opportunity, and I try to align with business people who are attracting what I want, not what I don’t want. If I learn what they do to create what they want, then I can also do the same. This is what makes me think that they aren’t any smarter than I am, more blessed karmically, or even luckier. No, it’s some basic skill of being able to place themselves in a spot where 20% of their efforts produce 80% of their results in consistent and profitable ways. That’s what makes them different. Often, they don’t create their own opportunities, they capitalize on others. They don’t find opportunities, these drop in their laps – as if magnetically attracted. They don’t accept all opportunities, and I would suggest they’re very picky individuals. Once they do, though, they work just as hard, and smart, as anyone else and KNOW that they picked a winner.
Yet, there is much more to this subject. There is always opportunity out there, that’s true. Is it the right opportunity for what you want to create? That’s the real question.
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