Published:
10/15/2011 06:55pm
The Bullying Crisis: Opportunity for Action
When opportunity knocks, do you open the door or complain about the noise? Opportunity is often a matter of perception. In our vision of the world is the image of ourselves. It may seem like some people have all the luck, which is often not a random act, but a time when preparation and opportunity come together.
Although opportunity is often a result of what we create, we must first recognize it to thus tap into it. The world is full of abundance and while water may be everywhere, so many fish in the sea are dying of thirst. Missed opportunities are obvious to the masses, for once a possibility manifests, reality requires mere observation of what might have been.
To recognize opportunity one must be a possibility thinker and also have the ability to predict patterns and trends. For example, at a time when most people are losing their life’s savings in the stock market, my son’s guidance gave me returns that no stock broker has ever accomplished for me. It is simply his ability to predict trends, observe patterns, and change his thinking as the economy shifts from a bull to a bear market. Crisis is opportunity in disguise but only for those who define it as such.
For example, George Soros, a hedge fund manager whose team of analysts made him millions during the bear market of the 70’s, fired his staff in the early 80’s when he predicted a bull market. The reason was because he feared they would not change their thinking. The choices that create wealth in a bear market are not the same strategies required for success in a bull market. In a bull market, when stocks fall one buys with the assumption they will go up. In a bear market, one must resist the temptation and break free of conditioned responses and behavior that was previously rewarded.
Recognizing opportunity is dependent upon your ability to scan the environment, for opportunities are everywhere, but we need to recognize them, see the potential, create a strategy, an action plan, and then muster the courage to take the risks necessary to move it forward.
However, it may not be as much a factor of what you do, but what you must not do. One of the reasons people don’t see opportunity when it is painted on a billboard and screaming louder than thunder is because of limited thinking and cerebral myopia. Often times, it may be due to negativity, but it may also be due to simply not being visionary and seeing the big picture. Unfortunately, creativity is often stifled by our education system. Corporations tend to be risk adverse, and yet calculated risk taking is essential for opportunities created by innovation. In other words, when you find yourself in deep water, become a diver!
Learning to dive has become crucial to my survival. While left brain people are often too cautious and are snagged by analysis paralysis, right brain people can tend to dive into deep water before learning how to swim. Being an off-the-chart right brain optimist, everything appears to be an opportunity when, in fact, it may be a serious derailment. For example, I bought a dozen pay phones although given fair warning not to do so. From the crooks who sold them to me, referred to as the Cuban Mafia, to the installer who collected his fees but never did the job, it was proposed residual income that had a tainted residue.
When I moved to North Carolina in 1997, being a realtor seemed to require simply taking orders, so, of course, I became a licensed realtor. There have been dozens of MLMs or multi-level marketing opportunities. While the concept is great, and many of the products were useful, once again it was another distraction from my doing what was meaningful and purposeful for me.
A former husband’s embezzlement was also disguised as opportunity as was a stock broker who, because I took action, is now selling ice cream instead. No, it’s not your neighborhood Dilly Bar Man! Then there were the opportunities that got washed away by hurricane Fran, but were sold to me by a realtor who had previously been imprisoned on felony
