Opportunities are abundant

Some get a lot of opportunities in life either in their careers, relationships, material wealth etc whereas some others do not get that many opportunities. So, what is the difference between these two groups of people? What makes one to get many good opportunities in his life? I read this story about the sales persons somewhere.

Perception: Two sales persons were given a task to promote and sell the shoes in a remote village. The boss of the company assigned this task to the first sales man. The sales person went to the village and he noticed that none of the folks out there wore even slippers and hence the shoes was out of the question. The sales person was disappointed as there was no market requirement for the shoes. He came back to the boss and said the village had zero market potential for the shoes. The boss sent the second sales person and he visited the village. On seeing the people not wearing any foot wears, he sensed a great opportunity to promote not only shoes but also the range of their other foot wears. He reported to the boss that there was a potential opportunity to launch their products into this village. So, our perception of the event/situation is more important in converting those into opportunities. So, how to change our perceptions?

Abundance mentality: Opportunities are abundant and infinity. We don’t need to go anywhere to get the opportunities. It is just around us. All that we need to do is to have that special lens that can sense the opportunities. For this, first we need to create an abundance mentality within us.

WIN-WIN Situation: We need to develop a positive attitude that there are plenty out there in the world. Everyone has a share from this plenty. And, you can have your own share from these infinite resources. When one works with this mentality then it leads to a WIN-WIN Situation. It is a situation that not only allows us to grow, but also the people around us.

WIN-LOSE Situation: We deal with life most of the time in a Win –Lose pattern. This is like dealing with everything in life as a competition. Competition becomes healthy as long as it is restricted to short period of time like in sports. But, if we consider every situation in life as competition then it becomes a lifelong process. Lifelong competition or considering life itself as a competition is very unhealthy and it affects the status of our health as well.

SWOT Analysis: Many of us would have heard about the SWOT Analysis. This is the four quadrants matrix analysis of Identifying the Strength, weakness, Opportunities and Threat. Strength and weakness are the internal factor within us where as opportunities and threat occur from outside. Strength and opportunities are our comfort zone and weakness and threat are the discomfort zone. Remember the other blog on the growth. Growth happens to us only when we start to explore the discomfort zone. Once we develop an attitude to look at our weakness (W) as an area of our improvement(A) and threat (T)from the external world as a challenge (C)then these two areas (weakness & threat) become the opportunities(O). So, it is an art of converting SWOT to SAOC and SAOC to SOOO.

So, the second sales person has developed an attitude of abundance mentality, creating a WIN-WIN situation, limiting WIN-LOSE to a healthy short duration affair and converting SWOT to SOOO. Now, equate yourself and your life events to the above suggestions and see how to convert things into opportunities.