How to Create Opportunities for Yourself

photo by Michele Bighignoli
photo by Michele Bighignoli

There was a time when people said, “when an opportunity knocks, take it.” That was before there were seven billion people on the planet.

Before technology so rapidly advanced, things were a lot different. Peoples connections weren’t as broad and usually couldn’t fill more than a Rolodex. Finding work was much easier, because the selection pool was much smaller.

If you are working in a job that you don’t like and want to get out, it’s not going to be easy. The days where a headhunter or hiring manager would call and say, “Hey, we’d like you to come and work for us” seem to have gone away. Whether that is temporary or permanent we have yet to see.

If you want to get away form doing something that doesn’t interest you and finding a paycheck that involves your passion, you are most likely going to have to roll up your sleeves.

Most people have worked in a job they didn’t like at one point in their life. The pay may have been good, the job might have been the right fit at the time, but all-in-all, it wasn’t want the person truly wanted to do.

There is something to be said about motivation and passion in work that you love versus work that your force yourself to do every day. That’s not to say that you could not be totally successful or the best person at what you do and not really have any passion invested in it. What is says though, is that you have probably had a job that you weren’t totally invested in.

If you are ready to break the bonds and find something that motivates you that you can totally immerse yourself in, you are going to have to do a lot of work. Yes, that’s right, in order to find work that you actually like doing, you’re going to have to do a lot of work.

First and foremost, you need to set a goal–an attainable one. Once you have the goal, you need to set some milestones. Make sure you clearly state what it is you want to do, when you want to accomplish that and how you can check yourself along the way to make sure you’re on the right path.

The biggest thing I’m realizing as I lay out my plan and work on setting my milestones is that it really is a lot of work. And it’s not easy work either. Doing something monumental like changing your career path or starting a new business involves a lot of reading, learning, understanding and patience.

Starting this blog and regularly contributing to it was one of my milestones. To keep myself in check, I created a newsletter that would push out every week (you can subscribe to it for free) but in that newsletter is a list of my latest articles.

In order to have a successful e-mail campaign, such as my newsletter, it needs to be filled with content. Well, if I don’t write, there won’t be any content, and then a blank e-mail would be pushed out, which, well, would not be that great.

So, my motivation is to keep writing and provide content on a regular basis, which I am doing now.

So what comes next? Well, once you’ve met one of your milestones, it gets tricky. Now you have to start juggling. You see, once a milestone is reached, you have to continue with whatever task you started as you begin your other aspects of your plan.

As you accomplish more and more of your milestones, you will find that you are juggling more and more aspects of your plan. While you’re doing this, you are not going to see a lot in return. You are going to have to depend on your existing job for your income (most likely) and ensure that you don’t lose focus there.

What happens next is up to you. As I started out, it is unlikely someone is going to come knocking on your door. Odds are, if you want to work for someone and do whatever it is that you enjoy doing, you are going to have to knock on their door.

At this point, when you go to make that introduction, you are at an incredible calculated advantage. You have laid the framework, you have proven your ambition, your drive and your persistence. You have shown that person or organization that you have what it takes to be independent, focused and committed. That is what I consider one of the best skill sets someone could possess.

Until you get to that point, though, you need to be persistent. You need to keep following the steps you outlined in your plan and continue to find ways to motivate yourself towards your desired goal. If you need to make a few tweaks along the way, no sweat. If you want to share your experiences as they happen, even better.

The first thing you need to do though is ask yourself if you are really willing to commit to changing your life and finally doing whatever it is you want to do.

Loving what you do is motivation in itself.

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