I beg to differ.

The ability to recognise opportunity has a lot to do with opportunity! It's followed by the ability to assess, develop and sustain it as a viable courseof action.

They are the #1 skill attribute of successful entrepreneurs!

My point, drawing intellectual cues from the late creativity maestro Dr Edward de Bono:

"The reasons that many opportunities pass us by is a perceptual one - we do not recognise an opportunity for what it is. An opportunity exists only when we see it." ...

"Everyone is surrounded by opportunities. But they only exist once they have been seen. And they will only be seen if they are looked for."!

Frankly, you can only create them via the process of assessing, developing and sustaining them, immediately after recognising them in the first place. 

Just as the late creativity maestro Dr Edward de Bono, often acknowledged as the Father of Lateral Thinking, put it: 

"The reasons that many opportunities pass us by is a perceptual one - we do not recognise an opportunity for what it is. An opportunity exists only when we see it." ... 

"Everyone is surrounded by opportunities. But they only exist once they have been seen. And they will only be seen if they are looked for."! 

He added: 

"If you wait for opportunities to occur, you will be one of the crowd." ... 

"Opportunity ideas do not lie around waiting to be discovered. Such ideas need to be produced."! 

His parting shot: 

"Studies have shown that 90% of error in thinking is due to error in perception. If you can change your perception, you can change your emotion and this can lead to new ideas."! 

These astute observations of his reinforce the fact that enhancing one's perceptual sensitivity to the world is a critical leadership as well as entrepreneurial issue, when it comes to recognising and creating opportunities. 

The Psycho-Cybernetics classic by Dr Maxwell Maltz is not just about the operating  mechanics and the significant impact of self-imge psychology and the goal striving mechanism.

It also touches on the imperativeness and urgency of developing opportunity sensitivity mindset, as exemplied in these astute observations of the author:

“What is opportunity, and when does it knock? It never knocks. You can wait a whole lifetime, listening, hoping, and you will hear no knocking. None at all. You are opportunity, and you must knock on the door leading to your destiny. You prepare yourself to recognize opportunity, to pursue and seize opportunity as you develop the strength of your personality, and build a self-image with which you are able to live - with your self-respect alive and growing.”

“Live in the present. The past is gone; the future is unknown – but the present is real, and your opportunities are now. You must see these opportunities; they must be real for you.

The catch is that they can't seem real if your mind is buried in past failures, if you keep reliving old mistakes, old guilts, old tragedies. Fight your way above the many inevitable Traumatizations of your ego, escape damnation by the past, and look to the opportunities of the present.

I don't mean some vague moment in the present – next week or next month, perhaps. I mean today, this minute.”

A valid observation from Matt Furey, President of the Psycho-Cybernetics Foundation!

Just a gentle reminder:

Each and every one of us is already naturally endowed with six higher-order mental faculties, namely:

• Perception 
• Memory 
• Imagination 
• Will 
• Reason and 
• Intuition,   

and also, having the robust belief that we were already engineered with a built-in creative success mechanism, as Dr Maxwell Maltz put it so eloquently, that's the support which Matt Furey is talking about.

By the way, when Matt Furey refers to our eyes, he is talking about the power of observation, which drives home my point about the imperativeness and urgency of developing an opportunity-sensitive mindset.

As for our ears, he refers basically to the power of empathic listening. This is where Stephen R Covey's third habit of the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People comes to play:

Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood!

So, folks, go and kick some butt! 

Just thinking - and sharing my musing - about what Dr Maxwell Maltz had talked about in his Psycho-Cybernetic classic:

'Close scrutiny will show that most crisis situations are opportunities to either advance, or stay where you are.'

A challenge is any situation that takes you out of your comfort zone. It’s important to see this type of situation as an opportunity rather than a crisis.

Dr Maltz had argued that someone with a negative self-image would often confuse challenges (opportunities to advance) with crises (life-threatening situations) because they would perceive threats to be bigger than they are.

Such folks would find excuses to avoid challenges, and they would even waste time and energy worrying or evading discomforting situations.

On the other hand, folks with a positive self-image recognize the difference between an actual crisis and a perceived challenge.

They proactively seek ways to overcome challenges, and they spend their time visualizing and planning how to make the best out of every situation.

In her breakthrough book Mindset, psychologist Dr Carol Dweck of Stanford University has explained the two mindsets used to describe a person’s attitude to challenges and setbacks:

• Growth mindset (people see challenges as an opportunity to learn); and
• Fixed mindset (people see challenges as proof of their inability to achieve success);

Dr Dweck has argued that even if you have had a tendency toward a fixed mindset, you could still develop a growth mindset, through conscious awareness and deliberate effort.

Frankly, many of the methods Dr Maltz had prescribed in his classic would readily complement Dr Dweck’s argument that you can improve the way you approach and overcome the challenges in your life. 

In continuation of what I have had posted earlier about developing an opportunity mindset, here's my next viewpoint strategy, particularly within the context of my proposition:

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

Viewpoint Strategy ~ SEEING BEHIND:

This is essentially learning from your past experiences.

The past does not guarantee the future, but you can certainly learn a lot from it, if only you spend time and make effort to evaluate it:

This is how best to go about it:

Questions to Ask and Ponder:

1) What worked?;

2) What didnt work?

3) Could I have explored a different course of action?

4) Did I have adequate support and/or resources? If not, what were the shortcomings?

5) What would work better, or faster, or smarter, the next time around with a little bit of tweaking?

6) What course corrections do I need to make in my life in order for me to move forward from here?;

In the field of project management, where I have had been involved for several decades of working in the corporate world, there is a proven methodology to use in reviewing past work, called Postmortem Analysis.

A quick one: 

It's just an opportunity for all the people involved to get together and discuss how the project went:

• was it a success?
• did the outcome meet your goals?
• was the project easy to achieve?
• were there any roadblocks or inefficiencies?
• what are the opportunities for improving in the future?

These discussions are imperative for continued growth in any organisation and improving the way your team works together.

To sum up, the viewpoint strategy of seeing behind essentially gives us the capacity and capability to explore opportunities, while drawing from our hindsight, so to speak! 

In retrospect, when I am reviewing my own journey on the Highway of Life for the last seven decades, I am indebted to Dr Maltz and his Pyscho-Cybernetics classic, and of course to other giants before me, for spurring my relentless quest for developing personal mastery, starting back in the late seventies.

One area, which I have had already written quite substantially here is opportunity sensing.

The other area is goal striving.

As I have had already mentioned earlier, my first encounter in the late seventies, was entrepreneur Paul J Meyer's Dynamics of Goal Setting program, which gave me the requisite skillsets, toolsets, actionsets and mindsets to get the ball roling.

In the ensuing years, as a professional in the corporate world (where I have had hung out for almost a quarter of a century), I was introduced to what folks called strategic visionising, and later on, scenario planning, which gave me another eye-opening dimension about goal striving, which corporate folks applied in creating a positive vision of the future, in an organisational setting.

More interestingly, they have duly empowered and facilitated my departure from the corporate world in the early nineties with  subsequent venture into following my own bliss, by setting up three small entrepreneurial outfits.

Without goal striving, both at the personal, professional and organisational level, I would not have come this far, in terms of personal success achievement.

I am now retyred (not a typo, just a novel way to express a new spin for me), enjoying the rustic laissez faire lifestyle in Vietnam, also a foodie paradise, where I have had relocated from Singapore more than a decade ago.

Continuing from my earlier posts pertaining to developing an opportunity-sensitive mindset, building on what I have had learned from Dr Maxwell Maltz in the late seventies, and then throughout the ensuing years while riding on the shoulders of other giants before me, here's my next Viewpoint Strategy:

VIEWPOINT STRATEGY ~ SEEING THROUGH DIFFERENT LENS:

Albert Einstein, acknowledged by Time Magazine as the Smartest Person of the 20th Century, demonstrated to us in the early twentieth century that if we look at anything through a different lens, what we perceive will be different.

It's actually called REFRAMING!

Although reframing may have its origins in neuro-linguistics programming or NLP, it is actually just a simple process of changing the context or representation of a problem or issue at hand.

In reality, it is "shifting the meaning of" or "changing the way we think about" the problem or issue at hand.

That is to say, the meaning of anything is found essentially in the mental frame within which we view it.

According to NLP experts, when we perceive something as a problem, that's the message we send to our brain.

Then, the brain produces states in our body that make it a reality.

When we change our frame of reference by looking at the same problem from a different viewpoint, we can change our response to it.

More precisely, we can change our perception and/or representation about anything – object, event or process, situation, circumstance, people, idea – by according it a different meaning, and thus, allowing us to take a different approach & giving us new possibilities for the actions that we might take & the responses we might execute.

This is what reframing is all about.

For a better understanding, I like to point out that reframing is about changing perception.

However, since I am not an NLP junkie, I will approach reframing from a slightly different perspective.

I want to use reframing as a strategy for problem solving and opportunity discovery.

Over the years, I have learned more than a dozen possible ways – remember, I rode on the shoulders of giants before me - to see an issue or a problem or a challenge through diffferent lens or reframing, and would like to share them with readers:

1) Personality Frame:

- Just imagine that you are the issue or problem or challenge and adopt the personality of a particular person, and then explore how you would feel and act exactly within the issue or problem or challenge;

- In Synectics brainstorming methodology, we call this the 'personal analogy' approach;

2) Opposite Frame:

- Look at contrasting possibilities of the issue or problem or challenge;

- Our mind tend to look at only "similarities", and often "contrasts" can add another dimension to our viewpoint;

3) Flex Frame:

- Change the attributes of the issue or problem or challenge to see how you can flex it at will, say with the help of the well-known SCAMPER methodology;

- Explore the problem by shifting from pessimistic to optimistic, and then back to neutral standpoints;

4) Future Frame:

- Play with futuristic scenarios to see how the issue or problem or challenge can be addressed, especially when you have unlimited power, money, time, and resources;

- Your futuristic scenarios can take the form of global, regional, industry, market, product, organisational or personal levels;

5) Failure Frame:

- Approach the issue or problem or challenge from the standpoint of “failing forward faster”, by viewing the potential consequences as "opportunities";

- Our mind tend to look at "success" only, whereas looking at "failure" brings many possibilities to the issue or problem or challenge, often not recognised from looking the other way;

6) Fun Frame:

- Approach the problem from the standpoint of a curious child, with awe, joy and wonder at your disposal;

- Just imagine: When we could see the world through the eyes of a child, we would see the magic in everything!

7) Friends Frame:

- Get as many viewpoints as possible about the problem from your friends, especially those who aren't afraid to be honest with you, or even family members or colleagues;

- This approach will certainly help to remove some of your own blind spots;

8) Fame Frame:

- Imagine you are Einstein or Edison or Tesla, & explore how your new self would solve the problem;

- You can also include celebrities &/or renowned thought leaders like Peter Drucker or even MM Lee Kuan Yew;

9) Fiction Frame:

- Imagine your are Sherlock Holmes or Dick Tracy or Columbo, & then explore how they would
tackle the problem;

- Try MacGyver;

10) Fantasy Frame:

- Go to the extremes, or out of this world, into 'Fantasyland', to explore the problem;

- Just imagine how 'Alien' &/or 'Predator' would tackle the problem & come up with a solution;

11) Flip-side Frame:

- Look at the upside & the downside or reverse side of the problem;

12) Whole-Brain Frame:

- Explore the problem by walking around the 'rational bottom-line', 'conservative procedural', 'emotional people-oriented', & 'intuitive big-picture', viewpoints;

13) Five Senses Frame:

- Explore the problem using all the five physical senses, e.g. seeing, listening, smelling, tasting & touching;

Continuing my intellectual journey on building and exanding my earlier lessons on opportunity recognition from Dr Maxwell Maltz, starting in the late seventies and traversing throughout the ensuing years of riding on the shoulders of giants before me, here's my next piece of advice:

VIEWPOINT STRATEGY  ~ SEEING THROUGH:

Basically, this is exercising perseverance and persistence in the face of adversity.

Many of us tend to give up easily when we fail in something.

For example, in school, when we got an F in the Chinese Language test or flunked the O Levels, we thought it was the end of the road.

There is no such thing as failure, only feedback.

When we made a horrendous mistake in some parts of our life, we just wanted to give up.

According to numerous motivational experts, there are no such things as mistakes, only learning experiences. But please, don't make the same mistake twice!

In fact, I like what R Buckminster Fuller, recognised as Planet Earth's Friendly Genius & inventor of the geodesic dome, once said:

"There are no failed experiments; only unexpected results!"

If Thomas Edison had not persevered and persisted in experimenting with some ten thousand filament alternatives, we would probably still be using large candles today!

As a matter of fact, Thomas Edision exemplied this "seeing through" phenonemon extremely well, as his wife once observed that, "Mr. Edison worked endlessly on a problem, using the method of elimination. If a person asked him whether he were discouraged because so many attempts proved unavailing, he would say:

'No, I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.''

[Thanks to community member Chad Alexander for highlighting this fact to me!]

Drawing on my own personal experiences while having navigated the Highway of Life for more than seven decades, I like to sum up the best approach, at least from the standpoint of goal setting and goal achieving:

• to have an umbrella of long-range strategic goals, covering all the major life dimensions,
• followed by a game plan, with a porfolio of specific, prioritised and executable tasks, that you need to accomplish daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and even annually, with your end in mind.

Naturally, you stay focused on your strategic goals, but remain adaptable and flexible in your tactical execution.

At the end of the day:

The ultimate fire test comes from your sweat equity in following up and following through what you have set out to do in your game plan.

This is how your "seeing through" works!

That's all folks for today! Stay tuned for my next Viewpoint Strategy!

An astute observation in the form of an inspirational quote by Dr Maxwell Maltz is the topic of this post.

The truth of this quote is self-evident to anyone with any experience in life.

The Chinese characterisation for "crisis" consists of two sets of brush strokes, for both danger and opportunity, just as former President John F Kennedy had put it.

All these observations make sense as in any crisis there is both danger and opportunity.

Interestingly, former wartime British Prime MInister Winston Churchill gave a slightly different spin to it, as illustrated here.

According to what I have had read, entrepreneur and freelance paralegal Stan Burman also has had chipped in to give his two cents:

"The pessimist sees only the danger; the optimist seees only the oportunity, but the realist, which is what I strive to be, sees both the danger and the opportunity and acts accordingly!"

Enjoy!