How to Prepare for Opportunity: 5 Steps You Can Follow

Opportunity knocks at everyone’s door.

We may not know when it arrives or how it arrives but when it does, all those who have prepared well will recognise her.

Nothing in my life came easy. During my earliest years, I was raised in very humble surroundings where my parents did all they could to provide for us. We lived in a decent home, an extended family, but we never lacked anything, at least that is what it looked like as kids.

Later on, I think when I was about 8 or 9, I started living with my dad. My dad was quite wealthy and even then, I wouldn’t say he spoilt us. We had all our basic needs, everything necessary and maybe just a little more.

But with all that, I grew up looking to own my own stuff, to have ownership over things I worked hard and smart for. One of the major goals I had was to surpass the success my dad achieved and it is still one of my goals now.

As I mentioned earlier, we will all at some point be met with opportunity and how successful we are at taking advantage of that opportunity will depend on a number of things, one of the most important being what I learnt growing up which is the character to desire your own things.

Why is this so important though? Well, if you desire to work for your own success you will have a deeper appreciation of the process and therefore deeper alertness to opportunity when it comes.

You will be more willing to fight for something that you worked hard for than something that fell into your lap easily.

You can often see a difference in hunger between people who understand the true value of something versus those who don’t.

Now that we have laid that as a foundation, let me share five important steps you may want to employ to help you make the most out of your opportunities.

1: Figure Out What You Want

It should be basic wisdom to understand that “he who has no direction has no certain destination”.

There are many opportunities out there but you will never take advantage of the right ones if you do not know exactly where you want to go or what you want to achieve.

First of all, it is very difficult to take advantage of an opportunity you are unprepared for and even if you manage to, seeing it through will be difficult.

The things you want to do must fill your soul. When your desires fill your soul you will act in a certain way. Those movements create a flow of manifestation that attracts the right opportunities to you.

Sometimes an opportunity comes to you before you know you need it, which can be great, but you need to desire opportunity in the first place.

It can sound something like this, “I do not know what it is that I want to do but I hope for an opportunity to push me in the right direction”. This is you being honest with yourself and you may attract opportunities that will bring revelation to your life.

Regardless of the eventual opportunity you need to be open to it. To be open to opportunities.

One way you can figure out what you want is to try everything. In the process, you will learn yourself and eventually learn more about what you want.

2: Prepare for Opportunity

This is easier if you know what you want.

With this step, you basically have to align yourself with the desires you have. For example, if you want to be an author, what courses can you take to better prepare you? What books can you read? What work can you create? What people can you associate with?

Preparing for opportunity means being proactive about being ready for the opportunities you are waiting for. You do what you have to do and use the resources available to you. No excuses.

If you are truly into what you desire, motivation will not be an issue. Even when things look bleak you will hang in there. If you fall, you will bounce back up.

If you do not know what it is you want, prepare for everything. Read broadly, study broadly, network broadly etc.

It took a while for me to learn what I wanted so before I did, I went into everything I felt curious about. I studied, I read, I practised. A lot of things fell off along the way but this was a refining process.

Basically, all the opportunities that have come my way up to this point I have prepared for. I did not know how successful I would be with some of my efforts but I chugged on and I will tell you this, everything I worked towards has had a high return on investment.

I now know what I want (I am always open to learning more though) and I am very proactive in preparing myself for the opportunities that are coming my way.

3: Position Yourself

This is a simple step.

You have been preparing yourself for the opportunity so what you want to do is be proactive in trying to meet her halfway.

Thing is, opportunity can find you where you are. I think this is the case if you do not know what you want and opportunity decides to have mercy on you and dance right in front of you.

For the most part, you have to meet her halfway.

Let’s say you want to be a dancer. You will want to attend dance events, dancing classes and start creating dance content. You are surrounding yourself with the appropriate energies and networks.

At times you don’t even need to parade yourself but being where you think your opportunity is enough to grab her attention.

This is something I learnt a bit later on but when I started implementing it, I saw great results.

I am at a stage in my career where I have some opportunities dance in front of me because I have taken the time to dance in front of them too. I try to place myself in as many situations and locations that attract my opportunity.

LinkedIn, for example, was a platform I rarely used but when I got two big opportunities there I saw how important it was to be proactive on there.

I visit people, attend events and do a whole range of other things to put me in front of as many opportunities as I can.

4: Be Able to Recognise Good Opportunities

So here’s another thing, when opportunities start to come, they can be a bit overwhelming.

So finally, the “opportunity powers that be” have finally recognised you, and they have all come to take a closer look.

Some opportunity comes to test you and some opportunity comes to genuinely provide you with an avenue to your desires.

This is where you need wisdom.

Each opportunity will require a certain amount of energy and resource from you so you have to pick them wisely.

Some will be more demanding than others. Some will be big, and others small. Others will have a high reward and others will have intangible returns.

None of these are bad but you need a proper mix of all the types of opportunities you get. You will have to learn to say NO or YES at the right time.

Developing this kind of foresight can take time but when you are more in tune with yourself and what you want, you start to get the hang of it.

I used to take in every opportunity until I started to burn out. Then I began to be selective, only choosing the opportunity that had the highest return on investment for the input I put in and the ones that aligned with my greater goals even if they were not the ones with the most visible or instant rewards.

The goal is to get to a place where opportunities start to look for you and not the other way around.

5: Can’t Stop, Don’t Stop

Now you will need to be consistent.

It will be tempting to relax the moment you get that one big opportunity or when you get your first couple, but there are so many opportunities that will even exceed your known ambition.

I have learnt that your opportunities will almost come to you in relation to your ambition, so the more desire you have, the more opportunities you can avail yourself to.

Be consistent in your self-development. Keep refining your intuition. Keep searching. Keep placing yourself in the right places and leave a lot of room for divine intervention.

There is so much I can say about this topic but I hope this short article got even a small fire burning in you, one you can build on.

There is enough opportunity for all of us out there, be proactive in getting your share of the pie.

Let me know what your experience with opportunity has been like. Feel free to share any other thoughts in the comments below.