If You Choose To See Opportunities Rather Than Problems, Then You Can Achieve Great Success
The world is divided into two categories and you have to be part of the right one.
I don’t know why, but the world is divided into two categories. On the one hand, some people keep seeing all the obstacles that present themselves as problems. On the other hand, some people see every obstacle they encounter as a new opportunity.
This divergence in reaction to an obstacle can be observed very simply if you show someone a glass of water half-filled. Some will spontaneously tell you that it is half empty, while others will say that it is half full.
The difference in reaction between optimistic and pessimistic people seems anecdotal, but it is something fundamental that separates people who will succeed from people who will fail.
An Obstacle Should Not Be Seen As A Problem
When an obstacle is going to present itself to you, you can consider it a problem. This is because an obstacle often represents a new or unexpected situation that you cannot overcome.
For many people, novelty or the unexpected is a problem.
By adopting this mindset, you will never be able to accomplish great things, because it is in the unexpected and the new that you will be able to build great things.
If you are constantly in situations that you have mastered, you will fall asleep in your comfort zone.
This comfort zone is reassuring, but no one has ever had great success staying in their comfort zone.
An Obstacle Is An Opportunity
The comfort zone pushes you to fall asleep on what you already have. Nothing in life is eternal, and if you fall asleep on your laurels, you may not last long in whatever area you are involved.
In order to get out of your comfort zone, you need to see an obstacle as an opportunity.
Let’s imagine for a moment that you want to create your blog. You have a lot of things to write and share with the world but you have no technical knowledge.
What are you going to do about this technical obstacle?
Will this obstacle put an end to your ambitions? Or you might consider this obstacle as an opportunity to train yourself technically in order to master WordPress, which is the reference solution for creating blogs.
By seeing the initial obstacle as an opportunity, you will then be able to offer your skills to help others who are in the same situation as you.
Seeing Opportunities Where Others See Problems Is Essential
By adopting the opportunity and solution-oriented mindset, you will open up a whole host of new possibilities. Going back to the example of creating your blog, if you’ve made the effort to learn WordPress, you can create an online course to help non-technical people solve the problem you had before.
You see that by choosing to view an obstacle as an opportunity, you will be able to capitalize on your efforts to overcome the obstacle.
Little by little, all your obstacles will be transformed into opportunities to be seized.
All the great entrepreneurs you admire have created their businesses that have become very successful in this way.
Jeff Bezos came up with the idea of founding Amazon, the world’s largest bookstore, when he wanted to order books online in the early days of the Internet and realized that it wasn’t possible.
Jeff Bezos’ initial obstacle to ordering books online turned into a phenomenal opportunity that he was able to capitalize on.
Of course, to create Amazon from this initial hurdle, Jeff Bezos had to make a perfect execution of his idea.
However, the most important thing to remember is that he turned an obstacle into an opportunity. What’s most interesting is that he fully committed himself to this path and seized the opportunity brilliantly.
Failure Is An Opportunity
You have to ask yourself what would have happened if Jeff Bezos had failed to create Amazon as a result of this opportunity that he seized. Well, it doesn’t really matter to me.
Success or not, Jeff Bezos would have continued as he does with his failed projects at Amazon year after year.
Jeff Bezos once said in an interview:
“I’ve made billions of dollars of failures at Amazon.com. Literally billions of dollars of failures.” — Jeff Bezos
In 2014, Jeff Bezos launched the Amazon Fire Phone. He was determined to make his mark in the smartphone market and take a big piece of the pie in the booming mobile industry.
Despite all of Amazon’s efforts and investments, the Fire Phone was one of Jeff Bezos’ biggest failures with Amazon.
How did Jeff Bezos react to the failure of the Fire Phone?
Instead of complaining, Jeff Bezos chose to see this failure as an opportunity. He has learned a lot from the mistakes made by Amazon in the Fire Phone project.
In the end, he and his teams decided to use much of the work done on the Fire Phone to launch a brand new project called Alexa.
Today, Alexa is the leading voice assistant in the market and can be considered a huge success for Jeff Bezos and Amazon.
You must therefore understand that by choosing to seize an opportunity born out of an obstacle you have encountered, you are not taking any risks.
The worst thing that could happen to you would be failure, and I have just shown you that it is in failure that most great successes are born.
So you have everything to gain from seizing opportunities by taking action.
Successful People See Only Opportunities To Be Seized
Successful people ultimately see only opportunities in life. No matter what obstacle or failure they face, they will see an opportunity.
An opportunity to learn or an opportunity to create a product to help people who might be in the same situation as they are.
To be successful in your life, you need to change your mindset and see opportunities in all the obstacles that will present themselves to you.
Then, you must take action without hesitation to make the most of these opportunities. If you do this sustainably and show resilience failure after failure, I have no doubt that you will be very successful in the future.