Jeff Howell: Infinite Opportunity!
Infinite Opportunity!
Hey, everybody, this is Jeff Howell coming at you with another edition of Mindset Monday. And today I want to talk a little bit about opportunity and what inspired this topic is a post by a friend of mine, Chris Robinette from the Nashville area, and he posted on Facebook a few days ago about how opportunities should be taken seriously and make the most of them because they can change the course of your life and career in ways that you don’t expect. You also don’t ever know for sure when an opportunity might close to you, and so putting yourself out there will give you the rewards for taking that risk and taking advantage of opportunities in the moment. So this this kind of got me thinking over the weekend, and I’ve been thinking about it off and on over the course of a fairly long time. But I think this post really inspired me to hone in my thinking on it and to really hold myself more accountable to the opportunities that are all around me. And so in my mind, there are three types, main types of opportunities that I may or may not take advantage of in any moment. And that’s business. Collaboration is number one. Number two is connecting with others, and number three is connecting with self improvement opportunities. So I’m going to go through each one of those just briefly to give you an idea of how I see opportunity in my life, because I think over the in the past, when I thought of opportunity, especially when I was still in the corporate world, I was more of an entrepreneur in a company.
And I had a lot of really innovative, creative ideas, and I collaborated with a lot of amazing people to bring those to fruition. And it was an amazing time for me. But it was different than being an entrepreneur out on the street and innovating out here on the street. So when I thought of opportunity in those days from that mindset, it was more like, okay, well what’s something that somebody can do for me? An opportunity for me to go and get a job or an opportunity for somebody to give me a raise or more money or an opportunity to maybe switch careers, opportunity to to do something like that. That seemed like it was already was already created. It was that sense of just kind of like going and taking something that is in front of me. That’s an opportunity, right? So now the way I think about it, just after really evolving and developing myself a lot more in the corporate space or in the business space, I should say, is that business is a lot more about, for me, collaboration. And so it’s kind of like in contrast to some existing opportunity, if you will, that’s going to give me something, but the opportunity to create and make something with others.
So that allows me to really be way more authentic and way more interesting, interested instead of interesting, they say the way to build relationships and connect with people is to be interested that interesting. And I think that in the past when I was in that other mindset, I was trying to be interesting or I thought I was interesting and I wasn’t as interested in others. And so therefore I didn’t get as many of these, these great opportunities to bring things into fruition because I was just too close down to hearing what other people had to offer and how that could fit into the dynamic of what we could create together. And so I think this is a great sort of perspective to have and it leads you down a path of or at least is the lead that led me down a path of really getting to know people better and be interested in what they do, what their experiences are, what their perspectives are, and then thinking about what skills and abilities do I have to create value with them in an innovative way? And that’s an opportunity, an opportunity to get to know somebody and create something that doesn’t exist, instead of an opportunity in that past mindset of just to take advantage of something that may be in front of me. So that’s a huge way that I’ve expanded upon my view of what opportunity is and has allowed me to tune in to the infinite number of opportunities that are all around me at any given moment.
And I think I hear a lot of people, or at least many people who say that, oh yeah, opportunities, there’s no opportunity, or even in the Legion space, they’ll say, Oh, it’s saturated. And you know, they’re very scarce mindset about revealing their niches or revealing what they’re doing or their approach to things. And it’s like, man, when I do the. Research. I see tons of opportunity everywhere. I see a lot of people doing marketing. I see a lot of people doing marketing wrong. I do things wrong just because I’m in a niche or Patrick’s in a niche and we’re doing that doesn’t mean that we’re the perfect people and we always do everything exactly right. Like we have we have issues and challenges to that we’re working through. So the opportunities are everywhere. And I think that that kind of mindset is really allows you to create momentum behind the actions that you’re taking every day. And so opportunities is key and your perspective and views on it or key. So the second one is the opportunities with others. And so this kind of goes back to me being in a lot of like masterminds and different experiences and communities and my personal and professional life really. And once those event and event is over, for example, it’s a conference or some kind of other event. Like I’ll often think back and review the tapes, if you will, like what happened? What did I learn there? Who did I meet? What are the opportunities for collaboration and connection with these people? And inevitably I think back and I think, Oh, there was that person that seemed super interesting or I knew some little thing about them and I would want to explore that and see learn more.
But I didn’t it’s not that I didn’t have the opportunity is that I didn’t take the opportunity. I didn’t make that little bit of extra effort to carve out that 5 minutes of time that it would have taken to approach them and say, Hey, my name is Jeff, and I heard this about you, and I’d really like to learn more like what do you do? Or How does this work or whatever, and really get that connection and then start building relationships by deepening those connections over time. And like I say, inevitably after an event or some kind of any kind of conference or event, I think back about those. Wow, that was a missed opportunity. I could have approached that person. And that just kind of has made me a lot more aware of this and made me a lot more, I think, inspired to hold myself responsible and accountable for reaching up to that level and creating these opportunities to connect with people in deeper ways. So that’s connection with others. And then the third one finally is the connection to myself.
And so I see infinite opportunity here because any time I’m thinking about how I show up in the world or what actions I’m taking on a daily basis, there’s infinite opportunities for me to improve upon that. Like, oh, I was negative in that approach to that, to that, to that, to that subject or that concept or that thing I’m trying to create or that thing I’m trying to to do. Oh, I procrastinated because I just if I would have just done it to begin with, it would have been it only took 30 minutes, but I spent hours procrastinating about it because I just didn’t have the the right mindset and didn’t I put it, had it on my list of things to do. And I just kept putting it off to the next day and the next day and the next day. And that caused me to waste a lot of time and energy that I could have saved. So these are just little, little insights into the opportunities that I have in every moment to up level what I’m doing. And then interesting conversations and thinking about, Oh yeah, I could have asked this, I could have said that, or in a presentation or in a mindset Monday. Oh yeah, I could have made this a little bit better. I could have done that a little bit better. But consistently taking those notes and reflections of myself as inspiration and ways to improve the way that I’m showing up in the world.
So those are the things that come to mind when I think of opportunity now. And the difference is between the way that I saw opportunity in the past, which was a very limited from a very limited perspective of what is already available or what could possibly be available instead of what I can create in from a business standpoint and getting to know other people, collaborating with them to innovate something together, and then the connection with others, the opportunity to create and deepen relationships. And knowing that I missed so many opportunities to connect with so many amazing people, and I’ve really been blessed with so many opportunities to have amazing people in my life. And I want to I want that to continue. So it’s my responsibility to build. Create those connections and build those connections as I’m exposed to those possibilities. And then finally the connection with myself and the self improvement opportunities that I have and really every moment to do things better and to be a better person and to show up for people in a different way. So this is all a mindset of opportunity. I hope you enjoyed it and I will look forward to seeing you on the next one. I’ll look forward to seeing you on Wednesday and hearing about your wins. Have a great week and I’ll talk to you soon. Peace.