Opportunity Knocks

By: Nadean Burkett, as published in Spectrum Dialogue Magazine.

…Will you know when it’s calling for you? At this time of the year, we are contacted by those preparing to graduate, and practice owners dealing with career and business issues. Whether managing change or being the agent of change, there are rewards, risks and challenges that are intrinsically part of our leadership roles in all stages of our careers. Opportunity is usually disguised as challenge and the sound of opportunity knocking can be drowned out by the little voices in our heads – negative self-talk.

Those who have identified our strengths and limitations, acknowledge them and collaborate with a support team of those who balance them, are better positioned to act decisively when opportunity knocks. Those who do not give in to immediate gratification (short term benefits or rewards) and are focused achieving their own clearly defined success goals, are most likely to recognize these disguised opportunities.

What stands in the way of most professionals seeing opportunity is the haze of potential risk or imperfection that so often surrounds it. There are no guarantees in life – spending effort avoiding risk or waiting for something to materialize that is ideal obliterates our views of opportunity. The fact is that those who wait for success to arrive often miss the invitation because it has not come packaged as expected. As John Lennon sang, “Life is what happens while we are busy making other plans…” Everyone’s opportunity comes wrapped differently. We must keep an open mind. We will have oru own set of challenges to manage and obstacles to overcome. Our ability to recognize opportunity as it passes by depends on our own life and career/business experiences, how we perceive ourselves, what we are prepared to do, or not, what you are willing to invest, or not and what our skills and talents are, or aren’t. Each of these individually and collectively will influence what our career or practice success plan looks like and how we make decisions. These all define how and what we recognize as opportunity.
Opportunity is only one component necessary to achieve success. Many people think of success as a destination, if this is true then consider this-there is no elevator to success, we must all take the stairs! When past clients refer their colleagues and friends to us, often the caller’s first statement is that they want to emulate the success of someone they admire or respect. But, they are aspiring to be their friend rather than being inspired by what they have observed. This seems to be a subtle difference but in fact it is cavernous. Every practice and person is unique – every challenge is different and life is dynamic. If we spend our efforts focused on the success of others, we may be overlooking opportunities for our own success.

Nothing worthwhile comes easy. We all appreciate and get far more satisfaction from what we work hard to achieve. What none of us see are the obstacles, effort and sacrifices it took others to accomplish their level success. The outward signs of success are merely the material results of success, not the measure of it.

If you want this year and this new decade to be your time to achieve your dreams, we have top five steps to success. These steps along with many more of our full length articles can be found on our website http://www.empoweredbynba.com/ under the Members Only Section. Sign up now and recieve exclusive access to our resources and exclusive notifications.

Nadean is also available via email for any comments or questions you may have at burkett@empoweredbynba.com.