OPPORTUNITY FINDING: A PERSONAL MUSING

For me, opportunity finding or the ability to discover opportunities is a learnable skill set.

Firstly, you need to move your butt, because action and exploration breed opportunities.

You have an idea. It's just an idea and will remain so if you don't do something about it.

Go for it! Seize the moment! Kick a***, to put it bluntly!

Exploration allows you to move into unbeaten tracks. As an explorer, you will most likely encounter new discoveries, which may also help to enhance or tweak your original idea.

It may also give you the momentum or impetus to tweak your original idea.

While exploring, enjoy the spontaneity. Take what comes!

Oftentimes, we get too entrenched in our daily habitual routines that we forget there is a wonderful world out there.

Sometimes, it is good for the mind just to soak in what is happening around you. Have a sense of curiosity. Walk the streets. Check out corners. Smell the roses.

Learn to be comfortable with uncertainty and ambiguity.

The world is never black and white. There are always gray areas. There are no right or wrong answers. Only what works for you or me.

To be frank, it is not easy to embrace uncertainty and ambiguity. For me, I have learned just to welcome them with open arms.

I often like to use the word 'perturbation' (many thanks to Nobel laureate Dr Ilya Prigogine!) to describe my life experiences with uncertainty and ambiguity. Perturbation gives me two choices - I can move to a higher order or I can go into entropy.

In reality, this is the university of hard knocks. Your degree is a fortitude to see and deal with more and better opportunities.

Try to be flexible in the way you approach things. This is very important.

You can stay focused on your desired outcome, but you must always remain flexible in your approach.

Flexibility allows you to try out different approaches. See the world with fresh eyes.

Hence, you can get to do more experimentation along the way.

Best of all, more learning experiences. In other words, more opportunities.

Creativity guru Roger von oech likes to use the analogy of racing drivers to describe mental flexibility. I like that.

Scan the environment beyond's one's horizon. That is, more exploration. Definitely, more food for thought.

This also includes reading, especially reading selectively, widely and deeply. Books, magazines, newsletters from the fringes, observing, listening, looking out for abnormalities, talking to people in social settings, checking out the Internet, attending conferences, are all part of the game.

Once in a while, get out of your comfort zone and move to the edge, into the stretch zone, so to speak.

New learning takes place at the edge.

I read from somewhere that Mother Nature works this way. A baby eagle takes its first step forward to the edge of the nest. Mother eagle gives it a nudge. More nudges as baby eagle stands at the edge. Mother eagle gives a final nudge. Baby eagle drops down from the edge with her wings fluttering furiously. In the next instance, it regains its posture and assumes its flight mode and then flies off happily.

Until you go over the edge, you just don't know you can fly!

The world is yours! It's full of opportunities.

PERSPECTIVES ON CREATIVITY

Creativity is inborn; it is the quality we bring to the activities we perform. It is an attitude, an approach that is inside-out, not outside-in.

Do not confine creativity to anything in particular.

In expressing ourselves, no matter what we do, even in mere walking, there is creativity.

When we sit silently, in contemplation, doing nothing, it is the non-doing that can be a creative act.

Buddha sitting under the Bodhi Tree, doing nothing, is one of the greatest creators the world has ever known.

Recognise that creativity is within; then consciously let it loose . . . and enjoy its flow.

We come into this world with a specific destiny - something to fulfill, some message to deliver, some work to be completed. We are not here accidentally - we are here meaningfully.

There is a creative purpose within us. The Whole intends to do something through us.

Any life lived fully will be creative. Some salient elements of creativity include:

- Consciousness . . . how awake, and awakened, are you to life, and to your state of being?

- Compassion . . . are you aflame with empathy, do you have feeling towards diverse aspects of life?

- Connectivity . . . are you able to seek opportunities and see possibilities by connecting the dots of life?

The individual who can develop these three qualities simultaneously becomes a three dimensional artist. The person who claims, and exclaims, that it ‘impossible’ to be creative is a victim of being polarised at one extreme of a set of continuums. He or she behaves in self-defeating ways, such as:

- Self-Consciousness, instead of Flow;

- Perfectionism, instead of Self Acceptance;

- Flat Intellect, instead of Bubbly Intelligence;

- Blind Belief, instead of Open-Mindedness;

- The Guru Game instead of Self Acceptance and Acceptance of Others for who and what they are;

To unlock your creative potential, or to disentangle yourself from creative confusion, consider these perspectives:

- Become a Child Again;

- Be Ready To Learn;

- Find bliss in the Ordinary;

- Be a Dreamer;

To remain aligned, and stimulated, ask yourself four questions:

- Do you live in the NOW?

- Do you look for esteem from without?

- Do you exercise all of your intelligences?

- Do you understand that life is a form of energy and information exchange?

[Excerpted from the 'Ideas on Ideas' edition of The Braindancer Series of bookazines by Dilip Mukerjea. All the images in this post are the intellectual property of Dilip Mukerjea.]

Say Keng's personal comments:

The way I see it, the crux of Dilip Mukerjea's principal premise in the foregoing essay is very obvious: WE ARE ALL BORN CREATIVE!

When we believe that creative solutions can be found at all times, we can start to see many possibilities ahead.

Our first or preliminary thoughts serve to prime our minds.

With the foregoing thoughts as raw material, our imagination, & fueled by our passion & enthusiasm, then propel us to spring forward. They open up possibilities & opportunities, often beyond the few limited options we initially entertained.

The eventual outcome is a redefinition, & may even be a reinvention, of ourselves that we would never have thought of in the first place.

From my perspective, I always see creativity as the igniter in the whole endeavour of opportunity finding as well as personal change.