Your Opportunity Awaits

The other day I heard an advertisement that said, “Your Opportunity Awaits.” They were trying to sell something. The message was that there is opportunity but first you have to buy their product.

From a marketing perspective they follow a common theme. The marketer wants to create a gap between what you want and what you have. Then they explain how their product will fill the gap and get you what you want.

All it takes is to buy their product. That’s it. Easy. Then everything will be better for you.

We hear messages like that all day. They mix in elements of self-improvement and positive thinking but ultimately tie everything back to buying their product.

Because of these common marketing messages, it seems like people have a harder time figuring it out for themselves. Instead of figuring out how to fill the gap, we rely on advertisements to tell us. We don’t work to solve our problems, we simply let others tell us what to do.

Then, when it doesn’t help as much as promised, we feel misled. We don’t feel as though they were honest or that the product doesn’t work as it should.

But a better approach is to learn to be self-disciplined enough to figure it out ourselves. We might ultimately turn to their product, but we have to become better at solving our own problems. And we have to learn to do this by improving the systems in our lives.

Turning to others to solve every problem won’t happen. Learning to open doors yourself will help you tackle each problem as it comes up.

We should work to shift our frame of mind. We should figure out what it will take to get what we want and then do the hard work to get it.

If we look at technological advancement, we see that life today is much better than in the past. Yet happiness hasn’t increased as a result of this growth in technology.

These always seem to be the thing that will make everything better. I am old enough to remember what it was like when cell phones didn’t exist. While it was different, it wasn’t necessarily worse.

Sure, it wasn’t as convenient to get ahold of people. But that also meant that if you wanted to get away, it was simple. You could go for a drive, and nobody could reach you. That seems strange today, but it made it common to be “off the grid.”

Today if we want to be off the grid we need to go to great lengths. In the days before cell phones, anytime you weren’t at home or work, you were off the grid.

Does that mean I would throw away my cell phone and go back? Nope. The advantages outweigh the disadvantages. And today, the expectation is that you are always a phone call, text, Teams message, Facebook message, or email away.

This shows that the answer isn’t in buying more products to solve all your problems. It is to be able to create the right systems in your life to be happy. The systems in your life can change and adjust based on the latest gadget. But you can develop the right mindset that, at your core, keeps you content and not chasing every flashing marketing message.

Because opportunity does await. But first we have to take a few steps on our own before we can take advantage of that opportunity. And that takes us working through problems systematically.