Last night, My daughter Maddie wrote about opportunity...in a round about way anyway. Everyone loves to throw out the old cliche "When opportunity knocks, open the door!" I like to throw it out there too. The problem is, many people wouldn't recognize an opportunity if it hit them in the face! Many of us go through life not really knowing what we want. We have a tendency to let life go on around us, while we slip into our daily routine and just live.
While this can be a "safe" route, we fail to recognize things that can be an opportunity. Here are some examples. When I was younger, I had a friend who was looking for a job. We were in high school then, so working in a store or restaurant was what he was looking for. Even so, he would let opportunity after opportunity pass him by because when they occurred he was doing something else. What do I mean? Well, one day while we were riding our bikes to a store to play video games (games used to be in stores or restaurants and cost a quarter to play) we passed a store that had a sign saying they needed help. My friend didn't even notice the sign! He just kept on riding. When we got to where we were going, I asked him if he had seen the sign. He said yeah, and that he would contact them next week. Next week! The sign hadn't been there the day before when we rode by and there were lots of kids looking for jobs. It would have been very easy for him to just stop his bike and go in and talk to the store owner (we even knew the guy since it was a small store and we occasionally went in there to play games). Well, as you may have guessed, by the time he went in there the next week, the job was already taken. If he had gone in there when we first saw the sign, he may have gotten the job. So why didn't he stop? Likely because he had compartmentalized his life. At the time, we were going to play video games...that's what we were going to do. He only looked for a job when he was bored at home. Did he finally find a job. Yes, weeks later, and much further from his house than the one we passed that day. So how do we not let opportunities pass us by? Here are some easy rules to live by, that I find are tough to follow unless you stay focused on them. 1. Have an inkling of what you want in all areas of your life. 2. Know what you already have, both the good and bad. If you don't know what you have, and what its good and bad points are, you'll miss a lot of opportunities to upgrade. 3, Always live your life fully. Don't compartmentalize it! If you are looking for a nice shirt, and you see one you like in a store window when you are out to do the food shopping, don't just pass it by because you went out to do something else! See if you can stop and get the shirt and STILL do the other thing! Opportunities knock all the time, we just need to be able to recognize them as such! 4. Finally, put yourself in situations where opportunity is more likely to knock. My daughter mentioned the story about how my wife and I started dating after I grabbed her hand to walk with her. And that's true. A bunch of us had left a party we were at to go to a shore bar that was near the beach house we were partying at. The bar had a gate to get onto the beach. One of the girls was only 18 and couldn't get into the bar. She had come to the party with Sharon, so Sharon felt obligated to go with her when she suggested going for a walk. I had been hanging out with both of them at the party and I was interested in Sharon so I decided to go along. Another guy joined us to even out the numbers. Here is where the opportunity part comes in. At that point, I hadn't made any outright advances on Sharon. We had talked and played some drinking games, but I wasn't yet certain about how she felt about me. Her husband had died a couple of months before, and I wasn't sure if she was even interested in dating anyone yet. The other girl, I was certain, had a crush on me. In fact, Sharon even mentioned it to me at one point during the evening! The problem was that she was 18 and I was 33 and we had nothing in common. As we walked towards the beach, I was afraid she would try to grab my hand to set up the couples, and I was much more interested in Sharon, who was 23 at the time, and easy to talk to. Well, to make a long story short, I grabbed Sharon's hand and smiled at her. She smiled back, and the rest is history. We broke away from the other two and had a nice talk as we walked along the beach...the perfect start to a wonderful romance! Seizing the opportunity to go for a walk with some pretty girls and then creating the opportunity to walk with the one I liked changed my life. Will all opportunities turn out as well as this one did? No. All I can say is that if you don't recognize the opportunity and then act on it, you never will know how it will all turn out. I guess what I am trying to say is to never let fear (fear of failing, fear of not being liked, fear of the outcome) stop you from living the life you want to live. Remember, it is your life. Take well thought out chances, and don't be afraid to live the life that you want!
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