Creating Your Own Opportunities

In the past few months, I have been noticing an interesting trend where people lament their lives because there aren’t enough opportunities for them.

Maybe we need to start changing how we understand opportunities. For so long, we assumed or were led to believe that once we’re old enough, the right opportunities would come our way. Flash forward a few years, and you will quickly come to realize that opportunities don’t just fall into your lap. If anything, they come by once in a blue moon and are fleeting.

Then there’s a rude awakening that makes you realize you have to go out and create your opportunities because they will not come knocking at your door. The idea that you have to create things out of thin air is daunting. But you’re in a tiny bit of luck because starting to create opportunities for yourself just requires energy, effort, and patience. All things you have probably already have!

If you have no idea where to start, here are a few steps you can take to start creating the opportunities you want in your life.

1) Figure out what you want

There’s no use in trying to create something when you have no idea what you want. Take your time researching, reflecting, and picturing what kind of opportunities you want in your life.

2) Putting yourself out there

Again, nothing will come knocking on your door. It is up to you to get yourself out there. How? Well, it might look different for everyone. For some, it might mean volunteering, networking, applying to jobs, meeting other like mine people who want similar things to you. For others, it could be starting their own business, organization, etc.  

3) Creating opportunities

Sometimes all it takes is one simple claim, email, question or answer to set off an opportunity. But at the very basis of it all, you need to try. For example, the job I currently have is thanks to me sending one email just prying and trying to see if I could volunteer. Nothing crazy, but that one email led to a few more and then a zoom call and now I have a job. I had to put myself out there and dare to just ask one simple question.

Creating opportunities in your life is not some giant momentous occasion, it is small little actions that you take every single day, 

Somewhere between one point and another, people forget that if you want something to happen, more likely than not, you have to go out and get it done yourself. The world is not waiting around, trying to find the right time to give you an opportunity. It’s entirely up to you what opportunities you go out into the world and create.

Does this mean it’s easy? No. But that’s the entire point, nothing easy ever really just happens. Opportunities do not appear out of thin air.

Opportunities require effort, energy, time and putting yourself out there.