This is a classic case of a lost opportunity. As Prophet Elisha was at the point of death, the king of Israel arrived. He needed help to defeat his enemies and so made his request known to the only man who could help him. His request was granted in full. He was given an open cheque when He was told to strike the ground – as many times as he would strike the ground would be the number of times he would be victorious over his enemies. Rather than strike the ground ten times or more, he only struck the ground three times. It was an opportunity of a life time, but he flunked it. He could not make the opportunity he had to count.
I have been instructed to speak to you on the topic, “Making Every Opportunity Count.” This topic excites me.
WHAT IS OPPORTUNITY?
Oxford Dictionary defines “Opportunity”
As a time or set of circumstances that makes it possible to do something; a favorable situation for a positive outcome.
Opportunity elicits interest in all of us because we all desire to have opportunities. To miss an opportunity is like losing a prized possession.
Opportunity comes in various forms, shapes, situations and circumstances. The saying, “opportunity comes but once” is often true meaning that we should endeavour to take advantage of opportunities that come our way.
On Sunday, April
30, 2006 Radio Nigeria aired a drama titled, “Wasted opportunity.” This reminds me of a home movie titled, “Wasted years.” In other words, wasted
opportunities entails wasted years.
TIME TO DO WHAT WE CAN WITH OPPORTUNITIES IS NOW
At John 9:4 Jesus says:
I must work the works of him that
sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work.
Many have died without taking advantage of opportunities they had to make their contributions towards their families, societies and the world in general. In other words, many have died with lost opportunities.
The language of opportunity is “NOW.” Omar Iban, Caliph of a Moslem state who ruled from 633 - 644 AD remarked:
“There are four things which come not back - time past, neglected opportunity, the spoken word and the sped arrow.”
Kahlil Gibran
wrote:
“He that tries to seize an opportunity after it has passed him by is like one who sees it approach but will not go to meet it.”
In his classic book, The Richest Man in Babylon, George Clason wrote:
“Opportunity is a haughty goddess who wastes no time with those who are unprepared.”
Opportunity favours only the prepared.
Preparedness
is a key element of opportunity. Some people are said to be lucky in life. Strictly
speaking, there is nothing like luck.
You must understand that luck is not some kind of mystical happening. Luck is preparation waiting for opportunity.
L. Charley wrote:
“Great
opportunities come to all, and the secret of success in life is to be ready to
grasp them when they arrive.”
Mario Andretti advised:
“Prepare yourself in every way
you can by increasing your knowledge and adding to your experience, so that you
can make the most of opportunity when it occurs.”
WHY
WAIT FOR OPPORTUNITY WHEN YOU CAN CREATE ONE?
If you want to make progress in life, rather than wait for opportunities, you can attract opportunities. Francis Bacon wrote:
“A wise man will make more opportunities than
he finds.”
Bruce Lee, late famous Chinese Karate
movie sensation said:
“To hell
with circumstances; I create opportunities.”
Stop
waiting for people to create opportunities for you, make efforts to create
opportunities for yourself. In his book, Reposition Yourself: Living Life Without Limits,
T.D. Jakes (2007:4, 8) observed:
Many of us attribute success or
failure to fate or some external force. We believe that we have to be in the
right place at the right time in order to achieve, much like winning the
lottery. But success is a direct consequence of our wanting a more abundant
life and working hard to earn it, like wadding through the mud puddles of life
toward the beckoning sea…. Isn’t it time for you to direct your hope toward
building your dreams instead of waiting on your dreams to build themselves?”
Do not wait for life to happen, make life happen! Eric Thomas advised:
“Stop
being a victim and waiting for somebody else to open up an opportunity for
you!”
To
do this, learn to scan your environment. When you do, you will find missing
gaps. At Acts 17:22-23, Apostle Paul scanned his environment and saw solution
to people’s need:
Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars' hill, and said, “Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious. For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, ‘TO THE UNKNOWN GOD.’ Whom, therefore, ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.”
Sometimes
opportunities come disguised. This is where you need to shine your eyes so that
you can make every opportunity count. Thomas A. Edison said:
“Most people miss Opportunity because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.”
When you do not take advantage of opportunities, it results to poverty of some sort. It is said that the word, POOR means “Passing Over Opportunities Repeatedly.”
SATAN PROVIDES A VALUABLE LESSON ON OPPORTUNITY
If there is anything you must learn from Satan, learn the need to take advantage of opportunities because he is an expert at that. The devil is a being of opportunity and he exploits opportunities to the full. At Ephesians 4:26-27 we are warned:
“Do not give the devil an opportunity.”
If the devil is a business man, he sure knows how to play the game of seizing every opportunity he has to achieve his objectives. At Luke 4:13 we read:
And when the devil had ended all
the temptation, he departed from him for a more opportune time.
Learn from Satan - learn to take advantage of opportunities.
LOST OPPORTUNITY BRINGS REGRET
Some years ago, I had the opportunity to invest in Bitcoin, but somebody who was with me then discouraged me from doing that. This same person later borrowed the same money I was to invest in Bitcoin and never paid back. Today, Bitcoin is selling at almost US$40, 000. 00 (twenty million, four hundred thousand Naira!). Today, as I stand before you, I am filled with regrets.
In the year 2020, former Governor of Anambra State, Mr. Peter Obi confessed that one of the greatest regrets he had as a businessman was not taking advantages of the opportunities he had to invest in Zoom when it was selling for peanuts. He had opportunity to invest in Zoom before Covid-19 pandemic swept the world like a tidal wave. At the heat of the pandemic, Zoom zoomed. Today, anyone who had invested in Zoom technology is a multi-millionaire in Dollars.
HOW
TO RECOGNIZE OPPORTUNITIES
Opportunities
abound around you - you only need to look to see these opportunities. Joel
Osteen wrote:
Michael Gerber said:
“The entrepreneur in us sees opportunities everywhere we look, but many people see only problems everywhere they look.”
The
opportunities you seek is probably around you and in you. What you are looking
for in Sokoto are already in your Shokoto. Therefore, look inside you and in
your environment. Nigeria is loaded with opportunities. Yes, things are hard,
but difficulties also present in themselves inherent solutions. Judges 14:14
says,
“Out of the eater has come something to eat and out of the strong has come something sweet.”
Opportunities abound where needs and problems exist. In his book, Stop Worrying, Byron Pulsifer wrote:
“A lot of times, we view a situation that causes us the real problem. However, if you turn it around and see a problem as a mere challenge, you will also see that there is an opportunity right before your eyes.”
Myles Munroe observed:
“If you call it an opportunity
instead of buckling under the load of the words crisis or tragedy or disaster,
then you can start taking advantage of what has happened.”
In her book, What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20, Tina Seelig wrote:
An entrepreneur is someone who is
always on the lookout for problems that can be turned into opportunities and
finds creative ways to leverage limited resources to reach their goals.
OPPORTUNITY IS HOW YOU SEE THINGS
Most times, what we see and how we see things determine whether we will take advantages of opportunities or not. At Jeremiah 1:11-12, God confronted Jeremiah and asked, “… Jeremiah, what seest thou?” Jeremiah replied, “I see a rod of an almond tree.” The LORD said to him, “Thou hast well seen: for I will hasten my word to perform it.”
Jesus
encountered a man who was blind. Realizing that the man’s life was filled with
restrictions, took him aside to restore his sight. At Mark 8:22-25 we
read,
And he took the blind man by the hand, and led
him out of the town; and when he had spit on his eyes, and put his hands upon
him, he asked him if he saw anything.
He looked up, and said, I see men as
trees, walking. After that he put his hands again upon his eyes, and made
him look up: and he was restored, and saw
every man clearly.
First,
the man did not see as he ought to see. He saw men as trees. Jesus knew that he was not seeing clearly. He did
what He did and the man’s sight was fully restored. He began to see clearly. I dare to ask you:
§ What do
you see?
§ Who do you see?
Where some
people see problems, others see opportunities. Take a typical refuse dump for example
– while some people, when they pass by refuse dumps close their nostrils, some
persons upon seeing refuse dumps rush to them and begin to scavenge, looking
for aluminum and metal scraps. Let me shock you – are you aware that a trailer
load of aluminum scraps sells for about six million Naira while a truck load of
metal scraps also fetches an owner millions of Naira? Winston S. Churchill
said:
“A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”
WHAT OPPORTUNITIES DO YOU SEEK - FOR SALARY OR FOR INCOME:
SUBSISTENCE LIFE OR WEALTH - WHICH?
What kind of life do you want to live? Are you satisfied with monthly pay cheque or do you want to be the person to determine your own pay cheque (income)? Think of the limitations of salary and opportunities inherent in self-employment.
When you walk down your street or major roads, do take cognizance of imposing edifices and glimmering automobiles that are driven past by you and ask yourself, “Who own these - Salary earners or Income earners?”
Even though, I do not denigrate salary neither do I venerate income, I want to say that salary is not the only approach to life and survival. Anyone who lives by banking on salary may die without earning any. We need to reconfigure our minds from earning salary to developing skills. Developing our individual capacities and becoming self-employed is the way to go not only in modern day Nigeria, but globally as well.
God has endowed each of us with certain potentials, which are yearning to be harnessed. I encourage us to see what God has deposited inside us to become what He has created us to be. One way to do this is to make the needed sacrifice:
1.Leave
the Big League to play in the local league (What you are looking for in Sokoto
are already in your Shokoto). For sure, there is a future is shoe cobbling.
Everyone wants to start and to hit it “Big.” Ask yourself, “How did Gucci, Dolce and Gabana, etcetera start?”
2. There are opportunities in agriculture, ICT (Software development) and in the Services sector.
STEPS TO BECOMING ENTREPRENEURIAL
1. Have Faith In Yourself and In
Your Abilities
Sometimes, the temptation is to doubt certain abilities that
we are endowed with. The only way to overcome this is to keep doing what we are
doing until we perfect the art. You must learn to have faith in your faith and
to doubt your doubts. Israelmore Ayivor
wrote:
“Those
who mistrust their own abilities are being too wicked to themselves,
discouraging themselves from doing what they should have been excelling in. If
you are good at discouraging yourself, you can't be a good leader because
leadership is built on inspiring others to face challenges.”
In his book, The Light in the Heart, Roy T. Bennett observed:
“Believe in your
infinite potential. Your only limitations are those you set upon
yourself. Believe in yourself, your abilities and your own potential. Never
let self-doubt hold you captive. You are worthy of all that you dream of and
hope for.”
2.
Do What You Can With What You Have Where You Are
I encourage you to adopt the resolution that Edward Everett Hale had made. He wrote:
“I
am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And
because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I
can do.”
3. Search Yourself To Know What You Are Good At
The journey into entrepreneurship begins with self-evaluation. This journey is half completed when you know who you are and what you can do with who you are and what God has endowed you. It becomes challenging when you do not have any idea of what you have been wired with. Speaking to youths on an AIT Programme, TEEN TIME on Saturday, March 17, 2018, Isaac Success counseled:
“Find your place and everything
will fall into place. When you do, you will become the master of that place.”
YOU ARE YOUR OWN OPPORTUNITY-ARCHITECT OR ENEMY
Sometimes we think that our enemy or friend is someone else without realizing that we are our own best friend or worst enemy. As regards opportunities, we are our own architect or enemy. In his biography of Andrew Carnegie titled, The Wisdom of Andrew Carnegie, Napoleon Hill wrote:
“If you will analyze those who
cry, ‘No opportunity’ you will find that they are using this as an alibi for
their own unwillingness to assume responsibilities and use their minds.”
In his book, Achieve Anything In Just One
Year, Jason Harvey observed:
Your
life is rich with possibility, and you are the only one who can discover the
opportunities that will allow you to live your dreams.
Writing in The Science of Breaking Out of Your Comfort Zone, Peter Hollins wrote:
“... when we allow ourselves to get too settled in a comfort zone ... you stop challenging yourself, and you become too satisfied and docile. It’s during that ‘waking sleep’ that opportunities start to slip away.”
CONCLUSION
As I conclude this presentation, I encourage you to make every opportunity count every day, every hour, every minute and every second. I leave you with the following quotes:
“A neglected opportunity is lost
forever, and past omissions can never be supplied by future diligence.
Therefore, work while it is called day.” - Samuel Davies
“... think on the fact that the
seconds, minutes and hours that have gone by will never come back. That is why
we have to make use of every opportunity - seizing every moment.” - Rexford Sam, Creating Your Future.
God bless us
all!
Hilary Johnson Chukwuma Chukwurah (Evangelist)
Grand-Heritage Global Communications
Phone: +234 803 959 6919.
E-mail: hilaryjohnsonc@gmail.com.
