Creating Opportunities in Your Life

By Daniel Theyagu

Life sometimes throws at us unexpected challenges that we find it difficult to foresee and take steps to prevent or avoid it all together.  Nevertheless these unexpected turn of events offers us new opportunities that we would never have realized unless we face these challenges objectively and stoically. 

Albert Einstein once said: “In the middle of every difficulty lies opportunity”.  This rather simplistic observation has an iota of truth in that it is only when we are faced with difficult situations and conditions that we make a concerted effort to come up with some form of winning strategies to overcome these.   There are many people who believe that opportunity might someday knock on their door and when it happens they prepare themselves to open it.  However some of these people have to wait a very long time for this to happen and for others they wait fruitlessly. . 

The truth of the matter is that opportunity is something that you have to seek and possibly capture it to put it to your use.  Opportunity is not something that is tangible and is ‘out there’ such that you need to find it.  What you need to do is to learn how to carve out your own opportunities out of the station in life that you are in.  You may say that this would be impossible especially when you are in a disadvantaged position in life.  But then even if you have whatever you think that you need the question you have to ask yourself is whether you will be capable of getting what you seek. 

The whole fabric of human existence is based on a simple concept of correction.  That is to say when something does not go the way you want then you must start taking steps to correct it.  Thus if opportunity does not knock on your door, then perhaps you might just have to knock on opportunity’s door.  Question: Is this possible?  The answer is an emphatic YES!

The first and foremost thing you have to do is accept the fact that there are times in your life that you have to make your own luck.  Henry Ford once said: “One who fears failure limits his activities”.  I know that life is uncertain.  But then again if you think it through there is also uncertainty in every other aspect of life as well.  This is indeed the great mystery of life.  So rather then worry about what’s going to happen to you when you are struck by an uncertain chain of events, become optimistic and create a sense of enthusiasm and energy to face the uncertainties and seek out new opportunities. Take the cue from Henry Hoskins who said: Enthusiasm finds the opportunities, and energy makes the most of them.” 

To create opportunities in your life start by:

1.  Re-inventing Yourself

When you buy a new computer it performs extremely well.  However, after a few months it slows down as the hard drive gets fragmented.  This happens when information is saved and deleted and saved again.  In order to speed up the system to its original level of efficiency it is necessary to ‘defragment’ the hard drive.  This process removes the bad sectors in the hard drive and improves its efficiency.  Likewise your brain is your hard drive.  When was the last time you did a ‘defragmentation’ of your brain?  What you need to do to ‘defragment’ your brain is to learn to re-invent yourself.

You can do this by taking stock of what you’ve done well in your life and those areas that you have not been too successful. In those areas that you think you’ve failed, try to come up with new ways of thinking to see how you would have handled the situation if it occurs again.  There is a thing called the ‘self fulfilling prophesy’ which means that you become what you believe in.  Since there is a tendency for us to get trapped in a certain way of doing things it will be good if once in awhile we ‘defragment’ our thought processes to let new ideas flow in.  To do this you have to take stock of what you’ve been doing and see where you could improve your station in life. See whether you are capable of doing different things and once in a while try something different. 

2.  Upgrade constantly

We upgrade our computer system, our cellular phone, our wardrobe regularly.  What about ourselves?  And I mean both the physical and the mental.  Upgrade doesn’t necessarily mean throwing out old skills that you’ve acquired and replacing them with new ones.  Look at your abilities and see how else you can exploit them.  If you are an expert in a specialized skill, see what else you could do to improve this.  Ask yourself whether you could put your skills to other uses.  Be vigilant to the changes that are occurring around you and see whether there is a need to upgrade your skills if you are to stay relevant. There may have been many occasions when you are given ample opportunities in your organization to upgrade your skills.  Do this with a passion.  Even if you do not see immediate returns continuously upgrade because you’ll never know when you may need them. 

3.  Disrupt Habitual Patterns of Thoughts

We all have a tendency to develop a pattern of thought.  This usually occurs when we are tasked to do the same thing over and over again.  Once we find a method to do this thing, we form a habit.  Although there is nothing wrong with this process, there is also a danger when we entrap ourselves into a habitual thought process.  What you need to do is once in awhile disrupt your patterns of thoughts.  You can do this by looking at other ways of doing the thing that you do regularly.  If you are already good at doing a certain task, volunteer to do something else from time to time.  When you do this regularly you will find that you might find new opportunities that you never thought possible.

4.  Expand Your Knowledge Base

Management Guru Peter Drucker said: “Knowledge has to be improved, challenged and increased consistently or it vanishes.” When you want to create opportunities in your life you need to improve your knowledge base.  By doing this constantly you will expand your mental parameters.  This will allow you to see things from different perspectives and possibly come up with new ideas in different areas of your life. 

Develop the habit of reading widely in a variety of subjects.  If you cannot find the time to read there are other ways you can improve your knowledge base.  There are audio recordings in different genres that you can buy and listen to when you are driving or using public transport.  The internet is an extremely good source of reference. Make it a habit to use the different search engines and learn a new thing everyday.  This way you will slowly develop expand your knowledge base.  As your knowledge base increases you will start seeing subtle connections in what you’ve gathered to create opportunities.  The secret to creating opportunities is no to thing big always.  Sometimes it is the little things that might give us the edge that we need to make it big.  Take the cue from Hugh Allen who said: “Jumping at several small opportunities may get us there more quickly than waiting for one big one to come along”.  Think about this and as a coup de grace remember: “If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door” Milton Berle. 

Daniel Theyagu is a humorous keynote seminar speaker and principal training consultant of Lateral Solutions Consultancy.  He conducts training for many other organizations including Nanyang Technological University – Centre for Continuing Education and MDIS.  To engage his services visit his webpage: www.thinklaterally.com or email:  daniel.lateralsolutions@gmail.com

5 Steps to Stay Focus And Becoming Successful

 Whether you are working or involved in advancing your education or wanting to achieve your ambition, the one thing you need to be successful in your venture is to stay focus in what you are doing.  This is perhaps one of the most difficult tasks that you will face as our lives are full of distractions.

Distractions come in many form.  It could be a sudden unexpected crisis that sidetracks you off your intended path of action; or a new development that throws you in a frenzy of disarray; or the usual irritations and frustrations of every day life.  Whatever the distractions may be, it is up to you to take charge of what’s happening around you and continuously re-focus back to your original goals and aspirations.  In this context you are a bit like a guided missile system.  The guided missile was an advance military technological innovation whereby the missile once fired from its silo has the ability to correct itself as it hurtle along to find its intended target.  On board the missile is complex computer equipment that measures wind velocity, atmospheric conditions and geographic barriers so that the missile can make the right contours in its course to strike at the heart of its target.  It is indeed a marvelous piece of equipment and one that you could use the same working principles in your life. 

So now the question is: how can you stay focus in whatever you are doing?  Here are five effective steps you should always keep in mind.

1.  Get Tune In

Just like a radio where you have to tune in to the station that you want to listen, you should get tune into what you are doing.  Many a time people forget to realize what they are suppose to do.  In the office, when you have to deal with the many distractions that comes your way, there is a tendency that you might go after the urgent and important things.  Although it is sometimes inevitable that you need to do this, when it becomes too frequent you will realize that you have hardly the time to do the other things you are suppose to do. 

You can get tune in by prioritizing your activities effectively and handling those that are not urgent but important.  If you do have to handle urgent and important things, do these quickly so that you can come back to what you were suppose to do.  Further see whether it would be possible to integrate your urgent and important activities into your not urgent and important activities so that you could try to kill two birds with one stone.

2.  Respond – not React

If you go to a Doctor for some illness and he prescribes you a medication, it is possible that you body does not agree to this medication.  You feel worst after taking it.  So you go back to the doctor and tell him how the medication is making you feel terrible.  The doctor answers you by saying that your body is ‘reacting’ to the medication.  However, if you take the medication and start feeling better, the doctor might now say that you are ‘responding’ well to it.  In your life to you need to respond to the challenges that you face instead of reacting to them. 

When you learn to respond to the situations that confronts you, you take charge of the challenge and you will know what to do and thus gravitate towards finding a practical solution to the issue that is bothering you.  You can learn to respond rather than react by being clear of the challenge that you are facing and instead of waiting for the situation to escalate into something worst to try to stifle it at its bud.  The best way to do this is not to procrastinate when you are faced with such dilemmas but to address them objectively and to resolve them effectively where possible.

3.  Break it Down

Whatever your goals and aspirations are, the sure fire way of achieving them is to break them down into little portions.  When you break down your goals, you will find it easier to achieve them.  It’s a bit like climbing a ladder – one step at a time.   It is important too that as you attain the little targets that you set for yourself to celebrate the minor success of achieving them so that you will feel motivated and inspired to continue in your quest.  Some times failure is inevitable in your quest.  However, when you fail there is no need to be disheartened. Rather look objectively at your failure and see what feedback you can get from it to do it better next time. 

4.  Maintaining Your Ethical Dimension

There have been many cases lately of leaders and large corporations compromising their ethics in achieving their goals.  Many individuals too in their quest for success have failed to realize their ethical dimension.  Your ethical dimension makes you what you are and who you become.  Keep in mind the real reason for you wanting to achieve your goals and aspirations.  You should be driven by a passion to achieve your goal rather than for glory. When you start trading your passion for glory you start losing your sense of direction and you just might end up some place else. You may have heard of world class athletes who pump themselves with steroids because they so intensely want to win at all costs that they loose their sense of passion and eventually fall into disgrace.

You can maintain your ethical dimensions by embedding what you are doing with strong principles based on fair-play and social responsibility.  In staying focus in achieving your goals be wary of how your actions might influence others.  Learn to be empathetic towards others and at the same time be assertive in what you do to get what you want.

5.  Carpe Diem (or Harvest the Day)

Carpe Diem is a phrase from a Latin poem by Roman poet Horace.  Although it means ‘harvest the day’ it can also mean ‘seize the day’.  There is a saying: “Stop worrying because today is the tomorrow that you worried about yesterday”.  Life is never a bed of roses and you are bound to have ‘bad days’ when you feel that you have reached your deepest pit and there is no more spark in you to proceed further.  This is when you should examine your values and principles and who you really are and what you want to be.

When the going gets tough you should start thinking of the real reason as to why you embarked on what you are doing.  In the navy there is a saying: “You cannot change the course of the wind, but you can adjust the sail of your ship to go where you want”.  Thus when the winds of uncertainty blows upon you, remain clear of where you are going.  Realign your life to counter the uncertainty that troubles you and stay your course. You should become tenacious when times are tough and stay focus no matter what.  Carpe Diem!