Seeing Opportunity

"Why, then the world’s mine oyster, which I with sword will open." - William Shakespeare, from The Merry Wives of Windsor

Opportunity is all around, all the time. Often obscured by ongoing obligations, opportunities abound nonetheless.

I had the good fortune early in my career to meet a woman about 15 years my senior (thank-you, Jodie Hartley!) at a job interview. Though I didn’t take the job with her company, she offered to be a mentor for me. When I next called her, I was feeling boxed in by having made a poor new job choice. She took me to breakfast, and reminded me that the world was my oyster, and if I chose not to open it, that was my choice – not my fate. She prodded me to get the blinders off about what I perceived to be “the rules” and get myself another situation - pronto. I did, within thirty days. It turned out to be one of the best moves I ever made. As we achieve more success over a longer period in our lives, patterns of “what works” become imbedded in our minds. Congruently, what “never works” also becomes a truism based on past experience. This can lead to limited vision in creating our future. Why did the world seem so full of possibility in our late teens? There was little to tell us otherwise, in terms of experience.

One of the most difficult things to do can be to transcend what you’ve done to date to be “successful” in your life, and to try things that are unknown, and therefore risky. Here are some examples:

Work

1. You’ve given up on trying to implement change in your current situation, because of past resistance from others within the company.
2. You feel “stuck” in a current job, company or industry, because you’ve acquired a level of skills, prestige and comfort you fear will not translate equitably into a new situation.

Life

1. Rather than communicating about an issue, you let it ride, because you feel reasonably certain how the other party will respond, so what’s the point?
2. You’ve acquired enough (money, friends, family, community) that the edge of wondering “what’s possible for me?” has been dulled by your level of comfort. This is why it often takes a crisis (divorce, job loss, serious illness) for people to move out their comfort zone. So how do you do it without a crisis?

And why should you want to?

As for the ‘want to,” if you feel you know how everything is going to turn out, why read the end of the book?

Where’s the excitement? I’m not suggesting that you go in and confront your boss (or spouse) in a new way just to see what happens….I am suggesting that you not assume you know what either one of those people might say when you make a new request of them, especially if you make it in a new way. Be willing to try things differently, even if you know a proven method to make them work already. It will expand your repertoire, and keep you growing, and interested!

How to start? Try these steps:

Commit to trying three new things in the next three months. Re-discover what it’s like to be a neophyte, uncomfortable with a steep learning curve and thrilled with experiencing something new. Pick something small (like trying an acupuncture treatment), something big (volunteer for an assignment at work that you’re not sure you can handle) and something fun.
2. When you’re efficiently ready to respond to a situation in the way you know is generally successful for you, STOP. Consider if there might be another way to go about it, and what opportunities might open up if you tried the alternate path.
3. Ask the people around you, in your personal life and at work, to try things in a new way. Don’t be discouraged by resistance. If you get a couple of “no’s,” make a different request, or try another person. See what it’s like to be a force for helping others to see opportunities, too.

If you’re thinking there’s too much potential downside to try these things, it’s true that you can cut your hand when opening an oyster. But if you don’t open it, there’s zero chance that you’ll get the oyster. And you might be fortunate and get a pearl or two. So grab your sword and open some oysters this month. Let me know if you’d like some support – coaching can be a great place to try out your ideas before committing them to action.

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Reach Me: Telephone: (970) 259-4847; Fax: (970) 259-4874
E-mail: ginger@magellangj.com
Web: www.magellangj.com

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