Opportunity
Every day is a new opportunity. You can build on yesterday’s success or put its failures behind and start over again. That’s the way life is, with a new game every day …
-Bob Feller (1918-2010)
Hall of Fame baseball pitcher
The golden opportunity you are seeking is in yourself. It is not in your environment; it is not in luck or chance, or the help of others; it is in yourself alone.
-Orison Swett Marden (1850-1924)
Founder of Success Magazine
The dictionary defines opportunity as “a good chance for advancement or progress.” That’s what we have facing us when we wake up every morning. Every day presents us with countless opportunities. What kind of opportunities? The kind I’ve been writing about throughout this book. Here are just a few of them. We have the opportunity every day to…
… build character …. practice self-control …improve our attitudes
…. love someone ….be honest in all things …do an act of kindness
…work hard ….feed our minds ….care for our bodies
….use kind words ….learn from a mentor ….be wise with money
In helping my students see their countless opportunities, I also wanted to help them understand the impact of their words on themselves. For instance, I would ask them if going to school was an obligation. The answer was always a resounding YES the first time around. I asked why they looked at school as an obligation. The most frequent answer was, “Because we have to go.” I asked them if using words other than obligation and have to would make a difference. This, of course, totally confused them, so they asked what I meant. I was ready. “How about looking upon school as an opportunity instead of as an obligation? How about saying “I get to go to school” instead of saying “I have to go to school?” As you can imagine, there were a few groans and a lot of laughs. They thought I was joking, as well as being corny.
But they were open to hearing my explanation, so I used a teacher’s most powerful tool – stories. I told them stories about some of the countries I’ve been to that are mired in poverty, and where education isn’t mandatory. I told them I saw 14 year old kids who didn’t know how to read or write, were working jobs that required hard physical labor, and were stuck in a dead-end system with no chance of ever improving the quality of their lives.
I said, “Think how fortunate you are. Five days a week you have an opportunity to come to a place where you’ll be with your friends, where you’ll be with dedicated teachers who care about you and help you learn. Most important, you have the opportunity to come to a place every day in which you can work toward achieving something with your life.” I also reminded them that they live in a country often called “the land opportunity.” By this time they understood that I wasn’t joking. And after a lengthy discussion, they admitted that they often take school for granted, and that it would be helpful to look at it in another way.
The truth is, the words we use to describe anything are a reflection of our attitudes toward it. Some people see problems, failures, disappointments, roadblocks, difficulties, misfortunes, defeats, and obligations. Others see opportunities in each one of them. As Bruce said, “Every day is full of opportunities. It’s too bad more people don’t see them.”
Hal Urban -20 Gifts of Life
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