By Ross Bonander Stress Management Specialist
We like to imagine ourselves as men on the precipice of some wild success, as though it’s waiting right around the corner for us. Yet, I doubt many of us know which corner. In time, it turns into a longer wait than we ever imagined. Before long, we’re stuck in our comfort zone, stuck amidst biases that we can’t wiggle out of, and the opportunity for success in any aspect of our lives becomes less and less likely.
What follows are four steps to help you avoid that fate. We have four steps that will ensure that you recognize opportunities, whether they present themselves in social situations, romantic situations or at the workplace.
step 1
Acknowledge the need for new opportunities
Can you really be certain that, if the right opportunity presented itself to you, you could recognize it for what it was? It might be more reasonable to believe that most of us spend the majority of our time on cruise control, personally and professionally. Our minds aren’t open to opportunities; we’re not actively alert to them. According to the saying, good luck does indeed favor those who are prepared to receive it.
The first step to recognize opportunities is to step up and decide that, whether in your career or your social life, things aren’t all that they could be and that you need to find something new. While it’s not quite the equivalent of standing up at a 12-step meeting and declaring that you have a problem, it does take a certain measure of courage to admit, if only to yourself, that life as you know it could benefit from a few improvements, and that new opportunities are one means to that end.
step 2
Take inspiration from others
The second step to recognize opportunities is to look into the lives of other guys; do some research into the circumstances that other men put themselves in to discover opportunities. Behind every successful guy is a story of hard work, good luck and at least one example of seizing a rare opportunity, one that he was — in one form or another — prepared for.
For instance, why do some men do better with meeting women than others? AM offers a host of ways to meet women, and none of them require anything from the reader (they don’t insist that a man look like a male model or that he be the funniest guy in the world). Rather, they present tried and true methods — ones guys have put to use before with results that are good enough to recommend to others. When push comes to shove, whether in one’s personal or professional life, the inspirational stories of other men often all share a single quality: They recognized an opportunity and seized it, taking a risk that may only seem smart in hindsight.
step 3
Get out of your comfort zone
Fresh opportunities are nearly impossible to spot when you stay in your comfort zone — especially if your comfort zone is that way because of a shy or passive disposition. There are guys who spend a good portion of their social lives hoping and praying that they won’t have to approach women, that women will approach them. Granted this does happen to some guys more often than others, but to rely on it for the bulk of your romantic life is crazy for most of us because, by-and-large, that’s not how the system works. And if your comfort zone is designed in such a way that you depend on a tear in the fabric of that system in order to meet women, you’re next to doomed.
The same holds true at your current position at work, where we all have a comfort zone that insulates us from recognizing opportunity when it arises. It’s rather astonishing that we can so easily conform to the monotony of a job, find comfort in it and panic at the thought of change when, if we looked from the outside in, we’d see ourselves in a position otherwise unimaginable to us just a few years prior. But that’s what a comfort zone does: It lays out a protective coat around us and lulls us into a false sense of contentment.
Whatever your comfort zone might be, in order to recognize opportunities and make changes to any aspect of your life, you will have to first acknowledge that you’re in that zone, and take the early uncomfortable steps to get out of it.
step 4
Strip yourself of bias
If an opportunity presents itself that is outside of your norm, our instinct is often to seek out the reasons not to pursue it: it’s too expensive, it’s too dangerous, it’s too fraught with potential humiliation. The last step in recognizing opportunities is to set aside these instant biases, to blunt their reactionary force and see the opportunity in front of you as nothing more than what it is: an opportunity.
For example, you may not think your job is an ideal one for you, but the sorry state of the economy dictates some extenuating circumstances — namely that you should be grateful to have this job since not everybody can say the same. While there’s nothing ostensibly wrong with this attitude, it shouldn’t cloud your judgment about other opportunities and cause you to reject them out of hand the moment they arise simply because the idea of leaving your job is too threatening. Instead of assuming that your current job is your lifeline during the economic crisis, and that anything else is too dangerous to consider, how about considering that new opportunities are being created within an incoming new economy — and that one of them might be just right for you?
