My Reality Check Bounced! - Jason Ryan Dorsey [22]
Take the following perception pop quiz and see if your perceptions jibe with reality:
(circle your answer)
How many gratifying jobs are available to you?
none / a few / lots
How many interesting people can you meet in one week?
none / a few / lots
How many successful businesses can you start?
none / a few / lots
How many people believe in you or would if you asked?
none / a few / lots
Here are the correct answers to the pop quiz: There are potentially hundreds of gratifying jobs available to you if you looked hard enough. There are potentially dozens and dozens of interesting people you could meet in only one week. There are limitless successful business that you could start. And there are lots of people who believe in you, or who would, if you only asked them to. The point of this pop quiz is to remind you that what you believe to be true about the world becomes what you perceive, which is then what you do your best to prove is right.
OPPORTUNITY LESSON 2: GET INTO THE PROPER MIND-SET
With time and practice, you can refine your perception to become virtual radar for discovering all sorts of opportunities. How so?
Start by telling yourself that opportunity is everywhere. When you have an opportunity state of mind, every problem is a possibility for greater achievement, every setback holds a secret to progress, every new contact puts you one person closer to your Future Picture. When you believe that opportunity is everywhere, this mind-set will build until it seems as if the entire world were working to help you live your dreams. This enables you to create spectacular success because, through your perception of abundant opportunity, it’s unavoidable.
Once you believe opportunity is right around the corner, you will keep searching and trying new things until you find it. The more opportunity you uncover, the more opportunity you believe exists, the more options you have for getting where you want to go—and the faster you can choose to get there. With a perception of abundant opportunity, you can start life empty and end up completely fulfilled, because that’s what looks and feels right to you.
The best example I recall of watching twentysomethings go from a perception of scarce opportunity to abundant opportunity happened when I was in college. We had a guest speaker who had retired from practicing law at age twenty-nine. He then won Entrepreneur of the Year for his new company at age thirty-four. After hearing the speaker’s amazing life story, a classmate told the speaker that he, too, wanted to start his own business. The problem was he couldn’t find a business concept that was proven to be successful. He asked the guest speaker how he came up with such a successful business concept so soon after retiring.
The guest speaker answered the class in a near whisper, “I have a thick book that lists almost every single company in business in our entire city. Not only does it list them, it also gives me a way to contact them.”
Our class was shocked that such a book of successful businesses existed! The student immediately asked to borrow this prized book so he, too, could find these proven businesses and get started living his dream. Grinning, the guest speaker replied, “You already have this precious book, you call it the phonebook.”
It turns out that our guest speaker hunted through the phonebook each year for business concepts to start. He looked to see which business sections were growing, which business sections were shrinking, and what business concepts looked promising. He then phoned the businesses he thought had the most potential and talked to their employees.