by Karl Warren

Opportunities are Everywhere

Do you sit at home waiting by the door ready to open it when opportunity knocks? If you do, I have some advice for you…

Opportunity is not a door to door salesman, it will not pester you until you finally give in and accept its amazing one-time-only offer.

Opportunity might come knocking once in your lifetime, you might be out or you might not hear the door. What then?

Why are YOU not out there kicking down the door of opportunity?

Seek out opportunity with an open mind. Realize that opportunity is everywhere.

Instead of seeing an amazing idea and saying “I wish I’d have thought of that” agree that you missed out this time and be the first to find another opportunity.

We have a habit of only seeing what we expect to see, often missing the obvious or unexpected.

It is only through a change in our perspective that we are able to see an opportunity when it is presented to us.

Have you ever run around your house looking for your keys or wallet while they are actually in your hand?

We often do things on auto-pilot, not realizing we have done them, for example; picking up keys.

It is because your keys were not where you expected them to be that you had to look for them.

How does this relate to opportunities?

The previous example explains how easy it is to fall into “auto-pilot” mode.

Our lives are filled with routine, getting up, brushing our teeth, taking a shower, going to work, and so on.

Routine is difficult to break out of – we miss opportunities because they don’t form part of our routine.

Never expect opportunities to come looking for you, you must hunt them down. They are everywhere.

Opportunities present themselves every day, they will begin to reveal themselves to you if you train your mind to recognize them and expect them to be there.

This short course teaches you how to find opportunities by asking the right questions of yourself and others.

What is the Million Dollar Briefcase?

The million dollar briefcase is a metaphor I designed to illustrate the fact that opportunity surrounds you, and how different people try to solve problems in the search for riches.

I hand you a briefcase, inside the briefcase is a million dollars in cash.

The million dollars belongs to you – all you need to do is open the briefcase…but wait, you need a com bination… w hat could it be?

You have four options:

1) Try to open the briefcase with brute force (sorry, no luck – it’s indestructible)

2) Try to guess the combination (sorry, it could be one of 25 million combinations)

3) Give up totally on your million dollar dream (you really don’t w ant it?)

4) Ask me what the combination is (you’ve got to ask m e nicely)

The briefcase serves as a good metaphor in this example – wherever you are, and whatever you are doing, there is a million dollar idea within 6 feet of you, just waiting for you to discover it.

You can sit for hours, days or even a lifetime trying to force your brain to recognize these opportunities.

Your mind does not respond well to this sort of stimulation and you will probably find it counterproductive and very tiring.

You can invent opportunities, come up with millions of ideas on your own for a problem which doesn’t exist.

Many entrepreneurs waste years of their life creating products to fill needs, needs that simply don’t exist in the marketplace.

You can give up trying altogether. If you give up trying, you will never succeed – there is always a way.

If you had a million dollar briefcase in front of you, I assure you, you would not give up trying to get it open.

Which leaves the final point, you could just ask. Learn how to open your mind to opportunities, know deep within your heart that they are there.

When you ask the right questions you get the answers you are looking for.

So, Where’s my Million Dollar Briefcase?

That is exactly the sort of question which you should be asking. Many people fail because of limiting beliefs such as:

• I’ll never be able to buy the house of m y dream s
• I’ll never be financially free
• I’ll never find someone to settle down with

Why not?

It seems like a ridiculously obvious solution to limiting beliefs, but those two words are worth millions. Instead of asking “why?” or using it as an excuse.

You should be asking yourself “why not?”

Here is a good way to get your doubts into perspective:

• Get a piece of paper and write down the following… “I can’t achieve my dream ”
• Then write, in big letters “W H Y N O T?”
• Write down everything which you believe is preventing you from achieving your dream.
• Now, look at that piece of paper and realize whatever you’ve written down is your own personal belief, if you change your beliefs you will change your life and most importantly you will achieve more.

Instead of thinking of reasons why you can’t do something, if you change your perspective and ask “H ow can I… ” you will begin to think of answers instead of excuses.

I’m going to go out on a limb here, I believe that anybody who is prepared to believe in themselves can achieve anything.

The first thing you need to do is realize that hidden around you are thousands of million dollar briefcases.

All you now need to do is find the combination to any one of them . I’ll explain how to do that later on in this report.

The Power of Perspective

Your brain sees exactly what it wants to see, I’m about to prove to you how your mind can be pre-conditioned to recognize opportunities.

I learned the following technique from  Richard Wiseman, author of “the luck factor” and “did you spot the gorilla.”

It is a very powerful example of how we affect our own perception of the world around us.

Firstly, take a quick look around you – look at large objects, small objects, try to remember the scene…

Now, I want you to pick a colour:

RED – BLUE – GREEN – BLACK

Look around you again, this time I only want you to focus on objects which are that colour.

If you chose red, look for red objects… keep looking, try to spot everything around you that is your chosen colour.

Most people report that the scene appears totally different than the first time.

They notice things they might not have seen before, buckles on shoes, patterns on wallpaper, buttons on TV remote controls etc.

Now, do exactly the same thing with another colour. It is to miss things when we aren’t looking for them.

It is also easy to see them when you prime your mind to look for them, as you did with this exercise.

Most inventors who solve real world problems go on to become very rich.

I knew somebody who noticed that the company he worked for was losing market share to competitors who were able to import goods from overseas more cheaply.

The fact is that they were goods from the same manufacturer.

Some manufacturers export surplus stock and sell it much cheaper than it is sold here, companies then buy it back in order to sell it cheaper here.

The process is called “parallel importing.”

Well, the man that I am talking about knew that his company couldn’t damage the long term relationship they had with the manufacturer by buying parallel imports.

To solve this, they set up a subsidiary company and gained back 50% of the market share they were losing.

Suffice to say he is now a multi-millionaire and sits on the board of directors of both companies.

Perspective plays an important part in your success, focus on a problem – take it for granted that there is a solution and make it your goal to find the solution.

In order to recognize opportunities, you have to first prime your mind to see them.

Look for everyday problems and look for solutions, ensure that you keep reminding yourself of the problem that you want to solve – eventually, you will receive a spark of inspiration which leads you to solving the problem, sometimes solutions are discovered by accident.

If the problem you wish to solve is not at the forefront of your mind, you will not recognize the solution even if it is staring you in the face.

Thinking Outside of the Box

One of the best ways to find a solution to any problem is to brainstorm. Some people find it hard to brainstorm while others find it remarkably easy.

If you are looking for ideas and inspiration, you should try the following exercise:

Using a blank sheet of paper, write down the problem which you want to solve.

Then, underneath it – write down the subheading: How would “I” solve it.

Write down everything you can, don’t limit your ideas – spend at least 5 minutes writing down all the ways you can think of to solve the problem.

Once you’ve finished, you might look at the paper and think you’ve run out of ideas. You are probably wrong.

As I mentioned before, perspective plays a huge part in solving problems and finding opportunities.

All you need to do is change your perspective and you could come up with a flood of other ideas.

Ready to learn the secret?

Use your imagination.

By imagining you are somebody else, in a different profession maybe, you could think of other ideas that you might not have thought of before.

How would a child approach the problem? How would a scientist approach it? How about a farmer, engineer, lecturer or astronaut.

It might take a while, but thinking about the problem from another perspective could yield some pretty interesting results.

We’re not finished yet.

Why not draw a picture which represents the problem, look at it in its visual form, doodle and draw potential solutions.

Why not compare your problem to something that someone else might have, for example – “marketing a new product” is like “releasing a movie.”

Why not look back at what you’ve written down, are you making assumptions about the problem – i.e. that it must be solved in a certain way.

If so, question those assumptions – make up new ones and keep writing.

There are hundreds of different ways to brainstorm . Once you’re truly happy about the ideas, you can begin to form a plan.

Bear in mind that you don’t have to come up with a solution all in one day, all you need to do is ensure that you desire the solution – eventually it will come to you.

With a primed mind and the right perspective you will be able to find opportunities wherever you go, one of these will be a million dollar briefcase.

Good luck finding your “Million Dollar Briefcase.”

Kindest regards and best wishes,
Karl Warren