When opportunity knocks, open the door. See the pony…not the manure pile (story follows:)
How many times has something come into your field of vision and you’ve turned a blind eye, believing that it would be far too optimistic to see it as an opportunity, and far more realistic to see it as an obstacle? As Al Smith says: “Obstacles are really opportunities”. Or in the words of Henry J. Kaiser: “Problems are only opportunities in work clothes.” Or, as Bill Dorman says: “What might appear as a problem is really an opportunity in disguise.”
This young lad saw a potential opportunity the day he sashayed up my driveway and asked me if I had a dog. He informed me that he was a dog walker, and quickly outlined the dog walking/poop scooping prices. When I wasn’t his customer, he quickly jumped to the next opportunity. We could all take a lesson from him:)
To use Claudia Anderson‘s word, opportunity is omnipresent. We just need to open our eyes and minds to see it. It reminds me of the story of the twin boys – the optimist and the pessimist – and the manure pile.
The pessimist brother saw a manure pile outside a barn, wrinkled his nose in disgust and saw the chore ahead of shovelling s*#t. The optimist brother quickly jumped onto the manure pile and started scooping big handfuls as he dug down deep into the pile.
When the optimist was asked what he was doing, he said:” With all this manure, there must be a pony in here somewhere!”
The pessimist saw only an obstacle. The optimist saw omnipresent opportunity.
Deeone Higgs says we should observe people’s actions, because they speak volumes. (And actions certainly spoke louder than words in the pony/manure pile story.) Do you feel that actions speak louder than words?
Ooooh, O, Oh (yes Lori Gosselin and Barbara Klein, those are your words:)…but for the life of me, I can’t remember who submitted obfuscate, and said: “Sometimes the many different opinions on an issue obfuscate me and obfuscate my understanding of the issue overall.” Yikes! Who said that? I’m obfuscated!
In business, it’s important that orthology play a significant part in our spoken and written communication, as pointed out by Katie Gutwein. In a post entitled “Mean what you say“, the importance of orthology comes across loud and clear when they say “lose the lingo, jettison the jargon”. Or in my terms: say what you mean and mean what you say.
And what, in Jen Olney‘s word outcome is the outcome of all this?
When we look for opportunities in business and life, we should realize that they are omnipresent. It just depends on whether you see them as a manure pile or a pony.
What opportunities are you taking advantage of today?
What opportunities might have presented themselves to you but you chose to ignore, or see them as problems?
What opportunities will you create for yourself today?
And remember…as Brian Tracy says: “Successful people are always looking for opportunities to help others. Unsuccessful people are always asking ‘What’s in it for me?”
