Train Your Mind To Recognise Opportunity

More often than not, the opportunity that you expect may not come with a tag, sometimes it may be disguised as challenges, changes, problems, and inconveniences. You will be surprised to know that two people can be faced with the same situation and they will have very different results at the end. This is not because the situation changed, but it is as a result of the difference in their mindset. When you train your mind to recognise opportunity, you position yourself to grow and flourish even in the midst of challenging situations. It is your mind that determines your perception. That is, your attention will be shifted to where your mind has been conditioned to be.

When I was in school years back, there was a major strike that was done that lasted a couple of months. While on the strike, a lot of students were complaining about it, and were even seeing it as a major setback in their academics. But I had a different view about it. I saw positivity and opportunity in it. I met with a friend of mine who was into fashion designing. I told him that I want to come and be helping him, and to also learn about fashion designing. I told him it was for the period of the strike, so he agreed. Incidentally, the strike even lasted a bit longer. So while others were complaining about it, I used it to learn a skill. But the time the strike was called off, I had already learnt it to a considerably good extent. What others saw as a problem and an academic setback, was what I used as an opportunity to grow and became better.

The mind actually determines what you notice and what you ignore. It normally acts like a filter. This is why, if your mind is trained to only focus on obstacles and challenges, you will see reasons why things will not work. But if your mind is trained to look for opportunities, you will discover that there are lots of opportunities in life, which might be hidden as difficulties. This does not mean that you are denying the existence of challenges. It means that you are acknowledging the challenges, but you are also looking for a way to learn from them, grow, develop, become better, and benefit from them. A lot of opportunities are flying around on a daily basis, but it takes the power of a focused and trained mind to see them.

Training your mind to recognise opportunity is a daily adventure. Your mindset will not suddenly change overnight, rather they will change by the constant daily choices you make. For example, you might face a setback or maybe things may not work as you have planned. Instead of looking at the negative side of it, you can just ask yourself "what can you gain from this?" "what options do you have?" "Which opportunity can you get from this?" All these questions will calmly redirect your perception from seeing what happened as a defeat, and start seeing it as discovery. Over time, you will realise that your mind will be shifted from frustration to curiosity, which exposes you to the infinite possibilities in life, not complaining about life.

Another thing you also need to understand is that your environment influences your mindset in ways you cannot even imagine. The words you hear, what you watch, the people you interact with, where you stay, etc, are part of what shape how you interpret situations. When you surround yourself with growth-minded people, and when you consume positive content, it will help to reinforce your mindset to focus on opportunities. It does not mean that you should avoid or boycott reality, but it means that you should choose the inputs that will bring positivities to you. You have to be cautious about the input you allow in your mind, because it can affect a lot of things about you.

Understand that to train your mind for opportunity requires daily intentional actions. At the end of the day, you should be able to reflect on what happened for the day, and how you have drawn opportunity from it. Even if things do not go as you have planned, there will still be a positive side you can focus on, while drawing lessons to become better.

Thanks for reading