Here's a pic from one of my presentations prepared in 2010 when I tried to capture some of my favorite quotes and juxtapose them with appropriate pictures.
They say opportunities come knocking. Not once... but.. several times. But we often ignore them or overlook them. As Winston Churchill said "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity while the optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
This can happen only when we are aware of the opportunity. So, coming from a positivist school, I believe the world is not full of pessimists. Then the question is why do people miss opportunities.
First the problem of not being able to identify opportunities. Reason can be explained as unawareness. Did you remember someone you knew saying " I could have taken the Design Course.. but ....." or"I could easily have done engineering.....' but or I was up for a top modeling assignment but chose medicine.... imagine what life could have been today OR the more common one among investors "I was about to invest in XYX stock.... only if I did I could have been millionaire like my friend." One of the most common mistakes made by students who get into the wrong course (they dislike after joining) or graduates getting into wrong jobs (hate the profession) is they did not do enough homework preparing to understand what it meant. Most often doing some home work or some kind of scrutiny would have helped make better decisions.
The other point about missing out opportunity is being overly cautious. We fear taking risks, fear the unknown, fear not being able to make it, fear the hard work and thus ... miss out the opportunity. Thus you end up giving a let go to something that you should have seized. I remember one person telling me that he got into IIT Mumbai in the 1970's but did not go as it was too far and he preferred staying at his village and studying in a college nearby but.. the real reason when we explored more was about the fear of going to the city and competing with the boys there.
Another reason especially among those who are talented, gifted or have some strength they never capitalized is their inherent lethargy. Left to themselves they would prefer to chill, enjoy life as it comes and no one was there to push them to the wall and drive them. So it is mostly talent wasted kind of situations that fall in this category.
Next think of the dreams you had but never converted to reality. To give wings to dreams you should have a plan. Lack of Planning is another way one has missed opportunities. By the time the race had to be run you were still working on the equipment and missed the race.
In human relationships we can often hear someone say "if only I could have made up with him / her.. Now he's no longer here..." . This happens when we don't mend relationships or build broken bridges with someone while they are there with us but regret it later when they moved away to something new and no longer are with us or when they unfortunately pass away from this world.
In all probability you find that when people are old and in the evening of their lives they often think and speak about what they did not do... the missed opportunities. But I think being aware of how one can avoid the chance of categorizing the wrong one's and regretting them is something we should understand. I will be discussing a very simple framework on how to avoid regretting the wrong missed opportunities. It is a very simple framework I use in my coaching sessions and training programs.
