I’m stealing this title from something that Harv Eker offered on his blog a few weeks ago. It makes sense.
There are an infinite number of opportunities and each time you stop to smell the opportunity, another bus destined for the place you planned to go whizzes by. Sure, it might be the opportunity that melds your skills, your heart’s desire, the needs of the community, and the potential for significant income, but it may also be another distraction.
Some people are opportunity junkies. Me? I’m a potential addict. I see someone, or something with potential and I am 100% there … imagining better. Whether the other person likes it or not. Got me into – and out of – a fair number of relationships. Now, in real life I mostly channel that impulse toward systems and inanimate objects. In writing? I may need to re-think that. I may still be trying to get you to see the potential in yourself and your kids more than you care/believe/want. Fair enough.
That’s me. All about the potential, and that can mean an obsession with considering every possibility. An opportunity is a possibility. If it isn’t one that appears to solve my current problem, I can ignore it, but if it has the vaguest connection, the research machine is in motion.
I know I mentioned my ridiculous search for savings on Broadway show tickets. The only thing I learned, and I put this together while searching for other New York City savings, is that I don’t want to spend my NYC time standing in any more line-ups than absolutely necessary. Neither do I intend to petition the concierge at the hotel for discounts on shows I don’t want to see. Having come to this conclusion, I found what seemed to be a decent deal in the first 10 minutes of internet searching. Not a great deal. So, I searched for another 4 hours – and bought the tickets I had found in the first 10 minutes. Got excellent seats. We can afford the price.
What might I have done with that 4 hours?
I could have concentrated on getting posts written so that I can take a holiday from writing while in NYC. Perhaps, Lewis, the heroine in my novel, Starfish Revenge, would have had a few more pages added onto her life. As far as I know her mother has some alarming information that will effect the entire course of Lewis’ planned revenge. It’s about time Lewis heard the news (I think I hear a band name drifting through that sentence.)
As you can imagine, 4 hours is a valuable commodity – have I told you about the rats? No? Okay, next post. I’ll just say that dealing with them is more than a 4 hour job!
When opportunities are a means of avoiding making a choice and moving forward, they have become an obstacle. Pick one, move forward. If it’s the wrong one, every door will be slammed in your face and it will be waaay toooo hard.
Don’t be a quitter, but know when to quit. If you need to abandon an opportunity, do it quickly and cleanly and make the next choice. If the doors aren’t open wide enough, but you can get your foot in, don’t give up. Seeing the opportunity through to the end will give you (me) habits that will allow us to do serial opportunities and actually accomplish something, rather than being an opportunity slut and having empty pockets and a lot of wasted time.
