It’s said that opportunities knock once in a lifetime. How true that is, may call for an individual to decipher and establish whether those opportunities are one time affairs or they are likely to get recurrent. I will share a five point plan, about how we can be able to set ourselves ready for opportunities. These are just insights that I have gathered for some time, from my personal experience and observation. I may not be able to give a detailed explanation of how you should actually incorporate these into your day to day, but they will be able to shed some light on how we can make them useful.
OPPORTUNITIES IN LIFE
When I thought about writing this, I realized that, life, or with life, there presents many opportunities, that we may not be quick or smart enough to grasp. Reason is, we are not even aware that they are opportunities worth grabbing. Opportunities can be defined as chances. These chances have the intention of bringing out the most of beautiful results if properly utilized. Opportunities come and maybe just once, so when you are given a chance to do something, ensure you do your best. So how do you go about utilizing those chances? I came up with this five point tips that we can use to enable us get prepared on how to get prepared for opportunities when they come our way.
- Taking Ownership
I have learnt that, whenever you intend to make a move on either a growth or a diversification, your move will solely be determined by your ability to take ownership of that growth. Taking ownership means, owning that journey of growth. Many a times, we find ourselves in situations where we want to grow, but we rely on others too much to enable us grow. Or we place that growth journey into the hands of others. Owning, means taking care of something very responsibly like your life depends on it. It is like when something delicate is placed in your hands, what you do is, you go out of your way to protect it, to nurture and care for it because when it gets broken, we bear the painful losses. That something delicate could be anything, it can be your family, your career or your business, just anything that is of value to you. If your wish is to see your family be successful, then how successful it becomes is solely dependent on you. Because you are the only one who will benefit from that beautiful family, so you will just have to go out of your way to do what deserves them best. Same applies for a successful career or successful business, you will have to put in the hours and the effort to see it succeed. When you are in this ownership journey, your sole purpose is care for everything that is dear and important to you. Owning will call for, you being solely accountable for everything and anything that you do which will help bring forth it’s growth.
2.Raise your hand up
Another thing I have learnt is, when it comes to opportunities, we may not all have the luxuries of waiting for them to come to us. Sometimes you will be required to find ways of getting seen so that those opportunities locate you. Raising up your hand says that you are ready to receive opportunities. Raising your hand is simply saying, pick me, pick me, I am here, I am ready. So then how do we get ready? How do we ensure that in everything we are doing, we are trying to raise our hands up to be picked? Over time, I have learnt that if you are consistent at doing your craft, you will acquire the skills that are adequate to prepare you for the opportunities in place. Being ready is putting your craft together, your skill together, in a way that is properly packaged such that if an opportunity comes knocking that requires your expertise, you are very ready to run with it. That is how you raise your hand. You raise your hand when you have something to show or something to give. You raise your hand by being ready . How do I place my work, or my craft in a platform that will make my work get seen. Am I practicing enough? Am I getting ready? These are questions that you should be asking yourself in pursuit of this readiness journey.Opportunities are endless, they could be opportunities for funding, opportunities for doing joint ventures, opportunities for a change in career, and all they would want to know is how ready are you? Are you doing enough to be seen?
3.Being true to yourself
Have you ever asked yourself, with all honesty, even shaming the devil, that, am I being true to myself? Am I being honest to me? Everything usually starts with you and also ends with you. You are your own game changer or deal breaker. Unfortunately, many a times we don’t know that we need to be true to ourselves even before we become truthful to other people. If you are looking for opportunities for change, or opportunities for growth, ask yourself, are you honestly doing enough to see yourself grow? Are you practicing enough a skill that you would wish to be good at? Being true to yourself will allow you to know where your faults are, establish your best skill sets, know what you need to improve on for you to become good or even better at something. When you are alone and can think best, ask yourself these heavy questions and if the answers are no, where you learn that you are not being true to yourself, then you will now know what you need to do. Being true to yourself is accepting to own your wins and failures too. It means, accepting and knowing when you need to change and learn something else, knowing when you need to ask for help, or knowing when you need to abandon that course completely because its not worth your time and effort. Being true to oneself, is the truth that no one tells you but yourself, and it is probably the only truth that you need to hear.
4. Scale Up ( Mission level up)
In my understanding scaling up means learning. Learning something new, or taking up a new challenge. Sometimes, opportunities could be lying in those things that you have opted not to upscale on. Many a times we interact with people or we could even be those people who have stagnated somewhere along their journey of growth. Equally while at this stagnation, we are worried and bored at the same time. Worried that we are not making the moves we thought we should be making, bored because, we are doing the same things over and over again. When we are faced with this moment of stagnation we only need to find activities that can help us scale up. Scaling up could be, learning a new skill or doing things that will expose you to a different challenge that will shift our minds from the boredom state. Doing different things will also create excitement within you and will help you to stay open to opportunities when they come. Scaling up, is one of the ways, that help us prepare for opportunities. You need to ask yourself whether you need to get extra training, or do you need to learn a new art? Or do you need to add some papers or even try a different idea altogether.
5.Believe in your dream- fight to actualise
Lastly as I end this read about opportunities in life, I couldn’t help but mention that, with all said and done, believing in yourself is very important. In fact, you could even choose to ignore everything else written on this piece and just choose to have self belief. Belief that you are the best there is, you can do better than everyone else. You can actually achieve everything you have set your mind to do. Believing in one self should be the song we sing to ourselves, the prayer we profess to ourselves everyday, that everything we put our hands into will certainly work. This way, in every opportunity that may come knocking on our doors, we know that we are the right people to receive those opportunities and run with them.
The world is your oyster- Is being ready to achieve anything under the sun if only you set your mind on it, by being true to yourself, by choosing to scale up when you have to, going on that leveling up mission if you have to, because you have all it takes to grab yourself the opportunities in life.
1.Taking Ownership
2.Raise your hand up
3.Being true to yourself
4.Scale Up ( Mission level up)
5.Believe in your dream- fight to actualise
SENSESNHUMOR
sensesNhumor 