"Opportunity knocks but once."

"Grab this opportunity while you can."

"Don’t pass up this opportunity."

"Opportunities come and go."

"Strike while the iron is hot."

I am sure readers must have come across - and experience - either one or more of these opportunity expressions at some point of their lives.

What exactly are opportunities? Where do opportunities come from or where do we find them?

Before I explain, let me share with readers a short story, told to me by my sales manager some four decades ago, when I was a budding sales engineer:

A shoe manufacturer sent two salesmen to Africa, each to a different part of the continent, to explore market opportunities. When the salesmen arrived there, they made a discovery: Everybody went around barefooted.

The first salesman sent a telex (precursor of the fax) to his boss:

"REGRET ADVISING ABSOLUTELY NO OPPORTUNITY. NOBODY WEAR SHOES HERE. COMING HOME."

The other also sent a message to his boss:

"UNLIMITED OPPORTUNITIES. NOBODY HAS SHOES HERE. GET READY TEN THOUSAND PAIRS. STAYING HERE FOR A WHILE."

Which of the two salesmen was more successful? Why?

The second salesman was certainly more successful because he could see an opportunity.

To salespeople, an opportunity is any situation in which they can offer a product or service.

To a student, it can be a chance to go to Silicon Valley for an industry attachment, or to join an Ivy League university, or maybe to strike an attractive deal with a potential employer, prior to graduation.

To others, it can be a favourable circumstance to initiate a new business venture, or a suitable occasion for career advancement.

When would these situations arise? The situations will depend very much on you, whether you are fully aware of the world around you, and whether you choose to see the opportunities arising.

Let me conduct a simple experiment. What do you see when you look at the following?

2 + 3 = 5

4 + 3 = 7

3 + 3 = 8

9 - 5 = 4

10 - 3 = 7

If you found that 3 plus 3 does not equal 8, Congratulations! You have seen, like most people do, that one of the sums is wrong. But that's not the only answer you could have given.

From my perspective, I can also see:

• numbers and sums, of which three are ‘addition’ sums and two are ‘subtraction’ sums;
• all numbers are less than '10';
• '3' occurs five times;
• '2' occurs once;
• '4' occurs twice;
• '7' occurs twice;
• '8', '9' and '10' occurs once;
• four sums are correct and one is wrong;
• there are four even numbers (2, 4, 8, 10) and four odd numbers (3, 5, 7, 9);
• there are three plus (+) signs, two minus (-) signs, and five equal signs;

What am I driving at? If you chose to see only the wrong-sum aspect, this will automatically become your focal point. If you chose to see both that and the other positive and/or interesting aspects I have illustrated above, then, you'll have more opportunities with which to work on.

Opportunities are all around you. But opportunities only exist once you see them, and they will only be seen if you look out for them. The reason why many opportunities pass us by is a perceptual one: we do not see an opportunity for what it is.

Think about the shoe story.

Both salesmen were presented with the same situation. Opportunity was waiting for both of them, but it was the second salesman who saw - and seized - the opportunity.

From now on, whenever you are looking at the people, places, things, events, happenings, ideas, around you, ask yourself these two important questions (which I have raised in an earlier posting):

1. What are the things I CHOOSE to SEE?

2. Where do I DIRECT my ATTENTION?

Instead of seeing opportunities, some people see obstacles instead.

Obstacles are often things or events or even people that we have to deal with every day.

How we tackle them will define us.

If we adopt the stance of a victim, they will impede our life. It will seem like the world is not fair, and we are likely to give up easily.

If we look at obstacles as opportunities, a world of interesting ideas suddenly opens up for us to find a way through.

In both cases, we have the same intelligence and resources to explore a solution.

In the 'obstacle mindset', we begin to focus on reasons why we can't succeed and then give up readily.

To put it more succinctly, an 'opportunity mindset' is the understanding that oftentimes, perception is reality. This means that an experience in itself is neither good or bad - it is what and how you perceive that experience to mean that counts.

It is interesting to note that the Chinese word for CRISIS is composed of two characters, the upper one represents DANGER, and the other represents OPPORTUNITY.

Take a look at your own life, and reflect:

• What OBSTACLES are currently holding you back?
• How can you convert each of them into an OPPORTUNITY?
• List ten different ways you can make the most of each OPPORTUNITY?

The power of the mind is strong: why not cultivate an 'opportunity-sensitive mindset.'

Here are some useful strategies and techniques for you:

1. Stay alert and activate all your senses, especially your sense of sight:

Dr Christopher Chia, former CEO of the National Library Board, noticed a pink stamp on an egg. He thought: If, like eggs, library books could be tagged individually, borrowing and returning could be automated fully.

So he put his project team to work and they came up with the Electronic Library Management System (ELIMS), a patented system that is a world's first.

Every year, ELIMS saves about S$50 million in wages for running public libraries in Singapore;

2. Be curious about the world around you and learn to see it from many different perspectives;

3. Observe patterns in everything you see:

When Singapore first embarked on the design of the MRT, one of the problems that confronted the designers was the air-conditioning of underground stations in a hot climate. They however observed a pattern among many office buildings, hotel complexes and shopping centres: they have sliding glass doors at the front to trap the air-conditioning.

The Singapore MRT became the first – and probaby the only one - in the world to have fully air-conditioned underground stations;

4. Seek out novelty or look for new ways to do things:

A local businessman, George Quek, together with his wife, a professionally trained baker, experimented thousands of ways to make bread exciting. They started the talk-of-the-town BreadTalk chain of bakeries, which often have long queues of customers waiting in line to sample their delicacies;

5. Be playful and ask questions:

A playful staff at Singapore Zoo threw a question while brainstorming: why don't we open the zoo at night. The Night Safari was born - the first of its kind in the world;

6. Generate alternatives for as many outcomes as you can:

It was reported that Thomas Edison went through some ten thousand filament alternatives before he successfully invented the light bulb;

7. Intentionally ask yourself how the situation would look different from a different perspective.

I have read stories in BusinessWeek and Fortune magazines that some corporate boardrooms are engaging kids and teens to help them to brainstorm changing consumer tastes;

8. Read, read and read widely:

R Buckminster Fuller, recognised as Planet Earth's Friendly Genius and inventor of the geodesic dome, credited his invention to a chance reading of a Nature magazine, which had a blown-up picture of the eye of a fly;

9. Develop a hobby and pursue it with passion:

When Sim Wong Hoo, founder of Creative Technology, was still a young teenager, his sister gave him a harmonica as a birthday gift. It fascinated him, and his life-long obsession with the sounds and music it could produce became his driving force in creating the pioneering sound card that blasted the world!

10. Reflect, contemplate and introspect more often about what you are seeing as well as doing;