Opportunity

A unique opportunity presents itself willing to be taken. It is up to us to seize it. William Shakespeare wrote, "There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood, leads on to Fortune." There is a turn to every tide. Some tides wash us up high and dry, leaving us in affluence. Other tides catch us in the undertow taking us to depths beyond our ability to cope.

Opportunity doesn't knock just once. If it did most of us would miss it. Opportunity is a persistent fellow, knocking and knocking and knocking. All we have to do is open the door.

Great opportunity comes to all. The secret is to seize a few good ones and ride them to heights unimaginable. Unique Opportunity doesn't often present itself in a finished package. It offers a hand which must be taken and a relationship formed. If you want to succeed, you must make your own opportunity fit your person. It is like clay waiting to take shape in your hand to serve you as to your desire and ambition.

To every man an opportunity is worth exactly what he is willing to make of it, no more, no less. Unless a man is prepared, the greater the opportunity, the greater the chance of it escaping his grasp. You must train for the opportunity you expect to secure.

Again, you can't wait until it fits your state perfectly, for providence does not work that way. Grabbing an opportunity beyond the strength of your hand can be the best way to develop the strength of your character that you hold fast the next time. So if one chance slips away, you must not let the failure become a habit. Don't fix your eye on the loss, but on the result it could have been. Learn to feel success in the hand as if it had not escaped you.

With confidence, seize the next one and own it.

Ben Franklin put it another way. "To be thrown upon one's own resources, is to be cast into the very lap of fortune; for our faculties then undergo a development and display an energy of which they were previously unsusceptible."

Each person is unique, so it is a mistake to look at the opportunities that come to others or to lament the unfairness of it all. It is a waste of time to wish you had the openings that others ignore, and it is an equal waste to despair of the easy opportunities that others take to prosperity. You are not the same person as any you may observe. You are unique. The infinite opportunities that come to you are unique.

Don't spend a moment worrying about the opportunities you don't have. You have many times more opportunities than you could even dream of taking advantage. Any number of them have the potential to carry you to heights of success beyond your wildest ambition. Select carefully, take one or two and make them your own.

Climb aboard and ride to the stars. Onward to your own destiny!