Developing our Opportunity Consciousness.

Every day we are presented with amazing opportunities.
We might not know we are… but we are.
Many of us don’t think we are… but it’s true.
We just don’t recognise them.
Mostly, we don’t see them because we’re not really looking.
Or we don’t know what to look for.
Ultimately we waste them.
Day in, day out.
And continue ‘the struggle’.
The struggle that doesn’t need to exist.
We think we’re living in the middle of an opportunity famine… we’re not.
They’re there.

We walk around with our eyes closed and our fingers in our ears, while opportunity does it’s best to smash us over the head… but we’ve trained ourselves not to see.

We tend to look for an opportunity which looks great, smells great, is no risk, requires virtually zero effort, can’t possibly fail and has a pretty pink ribbon on it.
Good luck with that.

That’s not an opportunity, that’s a delusion.
Wishful thinking.
Opportunities are often messy and hard work.
But that’s not what we’re after is it?
So we wait for the silver platter with the ‘gift’ on it.

When it comes to the numerous opportunities that come our way, we often:

(1) Ignore them… consciously or not
(2) Are too scared or lazy to do anything with them
(3) Don’t recognise them for what they are… a door to a better (new and improved) us
(4) Put them in the ‘too-hard’ basket

Most opportunities require a certain level of discomfort, courage and commitment from us; stuff we’re often not interested in, so we ignore them.
And we continue to wait for success to fall on our head from a great height.
Good luck with that too.

For this post I want to focus on no.3 on the list; the way many of us waste opportunities every day without even knowing it because we don’t see them.
We don’t look for them.

We don’t have our opportunity consciousness switch turned on.

You’ve got one, you just have to flick the switch.
You’ll be amazed what you’ll see when you put on your opportunity glasses.

A story about consciousness.
I remember when I bought my first (decent) car.
It was white, fast and sexy.
With it, I was the complete highly-desirable Alpha Male.
Not.
I saw it in the showroom and wanted it.
(I was young and stupid, forgive me).
Anyway….
It looked amazing and I hadn’t seen one like it on the street, so I ordered it.
Even though they had been available for a few months, there were virtually none on the road.
Or so I believed.
I signed the paper work, was told my car would be ready in three days and left the dealership in my old piece of crap. I was pretty happy with my ‘rare’ and highly desirable chick-magnet purchase.

Five minutes down the road, I saw another bloke driving ‘my’ car.
The exact same one!!
Over the next three days I saw about twenty of those rare cars… three of them identical to mine.

How come there was instantly more of them on the road?
There wasn’t.
I had simply ‘turned on my consciousness’ to see something that was always there.
Today I was seeing what I couldn’t yesterday.

You’ve experienced that right?
All of a sudden you’re seeing something that yesterday you were blind to.
Your consciousness switch had been ‘turned on’ to that particular thing.

Some people have an incredible ability (awareness) to consistently see opportunities and turn them into something more, while many of us walk around wondering why we don’t get those same amazing chances.
We do… but we’re not open to them.
We’re unaware.
And we’re missing out.

We need to develop our opportunity consciousness.
We need to look at things (situations, circumstances, events) through different eyes.
We need to consciously, methodically and consistently bring ourselves back to that place (of opportunity consciousness).
Mentally and emotionally we need to approach every day with this mindset:

“Today will be an amazing day because that’s what I choose… and today I will recognise and consider every opportunity that presents itself. I will be more aware, more conscious, more proactive and more open to what comes my way. I will not be handicapped by laziness, apathy, ignorance, fear or selective blindness and I will step up to the plate every day. EVERY day. I will not wait for gifts or luck, I will find opportunities and I will squeeze every ounce of potential out of every cell of my body. I will not make excuses; I will find a way and I will not die with my music still in me.”

*You might wanna put that on the fridge… or tattoo it on your arm!

One thing that virtually all successful people have in common (irrespective of their field of endeavour) is their ability to see opportunities where others don’t.
Or won’t.

And it is that ability which has led them to be some of the most successful people of our generation. They have a very high level of ‘Opportunity Consciousness’; they see opportunities where others see obstacles.
They have incredible vision, drive and tenacity when others have excuses; reasons to do nothing.
Again.

It doesn’t need to be an opportunity to develop a Fortune Five Hundred company or to change the world (although it could be), it might be something as simple as an opportunity to learn something valuable, to mend a damaged relationship, to deal with a problem, to take a small step forward with a personal challenge or… to make a zillion dollars!!

So my challenge for you today (and every day) is to consciously look for those white, fast, sexy cars.
Er, opportunities.
And do something with them.