Don’t Wait for the Knock

It would be nice if we were all blessed with 20:20 hindsight. The ability to recognise a great opportunity when it appears. Unfortunately such an ability does not exist and as a consequence, many of us allow opportunities to pass us by. Think for a moment about things you could have done, actions you could have taken that with the gift of hindsight, would have been tremendously rewarding, but for whatever reason, you ignored. The problem for many of us is we don’t recognise an opportunity until it has already passed by – or so we think.

Lots of people are waiting for opportunity to knock on their door. Some will wait a life time in the vain hope of hearing that elusive tap. The truth is opportunity will never knock. It never has and it never will. An opportunity is not something out there floating along that with a little luck will bump against your door. You are opportunity. Opportunity is always there because it lives inside of you, but so many of us miss it because we are so busy looking outside, when all the time it was right there inside of us. The term ‘opportunity’ is often reduced to a business or financial idea, a chance to increase wealth. But this is a very limited way to view opportunity. Everyday you are confronted by countless opportunities to be kind, to thrive under pressure, to be grateful, to learn and grow. The opportunity to become more than we are is within our grasp everyday.

All we need to do is decide to take advantage of the abundance of possibilities that present themselves to us on a daily basis. We do not suffer from a lack of opportunities in our life, we suffer from a lack of courage to act on what is available. Dr. Maxwell Maltz wrote that, “opportunity is your chance to be an archaeologist and dig under the debris of tension and conflict to uncover for yourself a sense of self-acceptance that will give you inner peace and comfort.”

My way of saying this is, that by being who you truly are, you find ease. You can surrender to the challenges of life or you can fight to be who you know you can be. To live your purpose, to shine your unique light on the world and be all you can be. Seneca, the Roman philosopher said “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” When we look at the word ‘preparation’ in this context, it means that you are ready, you believe in yourself and are willing to act. When we do not trust ourselves we will either not see opportunities or simply ignore them. Whilst many people are not happy with the current status of their lives, they find a great comfort in staying with the familiar, the known. To embrace opportunity means stepping into the unknown. Perhaps we elect to speak out about something that has been bothering us for years. We cannot be certain how others will respond. We are stepping into the unknown. Like a great explorer we must venture to new places in our hearts and minds and begin to discover the hidden parts of ourselves. The parts we have buried away believing there would never be an opportunity for us to realise that part of us.

You may feel that opportunities never present themselves to you. That you are unlucky and unlikely to ever be the benefactor of good fortune. It is this type of thinking that blinds you to your potential and all the opportunities available to you. History is littered with examples of people who overcome enormous obstacles to shine. Don’t defend your bad luck; we all face challenges and along any journey there will always be frustrations and barriers. But it is only through overcoming these obstacles that we grow and become more than we were. All too often people lose faith in themselves and therefore turn their back on the opportunity in front of them.

Thomas Edison suggested, “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed up in overalls and looks like work.” It is work. Opportunities don’t come gift wrapped and delivered. Sometimes the most brilliant opportunities are the ones disguised as impossible situations.

Don’t wait for opportunities to knock, really look at what is around you, recognise what is inside you and take advantage of the abundance that surrounds you everyday.

Keep Firing

Paul McCarthy

Two words of advice

A consultant friend of mine called me recently to ask if we could catch up as he wanted some advice. He was facing what he saw as a difficult decision. He had two possible business options he could pursue but was unsure which way to go. As he looked at the two options he could see pros and cons for both. From time to time we are all faced with decisions where we must choose one path over another. As we approach these forks in the road we can feel like this will be a seminal and life altering moment. We believe that potentially the decision to go left or right could hold huge consequences and as a result people can often feel particularly anxious about making the right decision.

This was my friend’s dilemma; he had become stuck, immobilised, and unable to make a decision for fear of making a mistake and choosing the wrong option. The fact is there are few decisions you will ever make in your life that will cause irreparable damage. There are no guarantees for success, so the potential for making the 'wrong choice' always exists, but if you become immobilised by the options in front of you and simply do nothing, what ever opportunities had opened up will soon close, and with them any chance for success.

I could boil my advice to my friend down to two words – ‘Do Something’. Agonising over trying to make the perfect choice is a waste of time and energy. When you are faced with two options that have an equal number of positives and negatives, just pick one. I couldn’t promise him that everything would workout perfectly no matter which option he chose. What I could promise was the fastest way to get to what he wanted was to do something – anything. What is critical is to stop procrastinating and take some action.

If you have been torn between going in one direction or another, pick one and do something today. You’ll be glad you did.

Keep Firing.

Success is Simple

One of the things that really interferes with people's ability to get something started is the belief that creating success in any form is a complex task. The truth is, achieving fabulous success is much easier than it may appear. Often the notion that achieving success is complex becomes a convenient excuse for why you never start. My old soccer coach always said, "Paul, soccer is an easy game made hard." People have a tendency to over complicate the challenges they face.

A great example of two people who have embraced the idea of simple are the Queensland based authors of 'Just 4 Ingredients'. Rachael Birmingham and Kim McCosker were two busy mums who saw a need. A simple cook book that would help time poor families save time and money. Rachael is a motivational speaker. Kim, after reading one of Rachael's books, was inspired to write her own book. Kim shared with Rachael the idea for 'Just 4 Ingredients'. Rachael encouraged Kim to go for it, but within a few weeks Kim had lost the motivation. When Rachael later followed up on Kim's progress, she learnt there had been little. Kim told Rachael the only way this book would get done was if they wrote it together. And so the partnership was born and they got down to work.

Now the pair was firing. They did their research and constructed a book filled with 340 recipes that require 4 ingredients or less. Rachael and Kim then approached publishers with their book idea. The response was not favourable. Publisher after publisher rejected their idea. They were told there were no pictures so it wouldn't sell, the green cover was all wrong and the big '4' printed on the front just didn't work. But in the true spirit of Ready Fire Aim, they saw their rejections as simply feedback. With all the publishers saying no, Rachael and Kim decided to self publish.

With very little promotion and despite ignoring all the advice provided by the mainstream publishers, the book has been a runaway smash. 'Just 4 Ingredients' has sold over 700,000 copes and is a number one best seller, now planned for international release. Rachael and Kim are planning a follow up book and of course, every publisher wants to sign them. They have rejected the publishers stating they'd rather do it themselves and self publish again.

Don't fall into the trap of making things more complicated than they need to be. Often the simplest solution is the best. Above all, however, once you decide to take action, keep firing. The feedback won't always be positive, but with persistence, success will be yours.

Just ask Rachael and Kim.

Keep Firing.

Excuses or Results

You can have excuses or you can have results but you can’t have both. You get to choose where you place your focus. You can put your attention on defending the reasons things haven’t worked out for you in the past or make excuses for why you’re not taking action or you can become results focused and view each piece of feedback as a step in the direction of your goal. I believe people can be divided into two broad groups. People who are excuse focused and those who are results focused. I meet people all the time who go to great lengths to try and convince me why they are not producing the results they want. They can go into intricate detail about all the roadblocks they face and how their inability to progress is due to a set of unique circumstances beyond their control.

What I know to be true is if someone is investing a lot of energy into making excuses, that is energy that is not going toward producing a more positive result. I am not saying that challenges, obstacles and roadblocks don’t exist – they do. We all face them almost everyday. So despite the fact we are confronted by challenges we can still exert control over how we view them. Do you choose to see obstacles as temporary and possible to overcome or as overwhelming and impossible to move past? You are the one in control of how you view a situation. Where you place your mental attention is where you go. Just as a racing car driver who begins to loose control of his vehicle and starts heading toward the wall, he's focus is not on the wall but instead he keeps his focus on where he wants to go – the race track. You move in the direction of your dominant thoughts.

When you place your attention on excuses there is only one thing that will happen. The size of the problem grows. The more you think about a problem the bigger it becomes until you now see a barrier so big you truly believe it is not even worth trying to progress and as a result you give up. A group of psychologists in the US conducted an experiment with a group of ice hockey players. The psychologists gave a test group of 100 players a picture and asked them to describe in as much detail as possible what they saw. The picture was of an ice hockey goalie standing in front of a goal in a defensive pose. Ninty percent of the players described the picture literally list things like who the goalie was, the team he played for the stadium, his number, uniform colour etc. But ten percent of the player described the picture very differently; their focus was not on the goalie, what they saw was all the places where they could score, under the arms, between his legs above his shoulders. What the researchers found especially fascinating was the fact that these players where also the highest scores in the league.

To live Ready Fire Aim you must keep our attention on what you want not what you don’t. Every time you defend an excuse you make it stronger, bigger and the task of overcoming it even more challenging. We all face challenges; no one sails through life without having to overcome obstacles. When you are next confronted by a problem acknowledge it is there and then switch your focus to finding a solution. You cannot eliminate a problem by focusing on it you can only make it bigger. So move yourself to solution mode as soon as you can. Your time on this planet is short, so don’t waste another minute of it making excuses and defending your position. Get moving, get excited, get focused and start producing the results you know you are capable of creating.

You Can Achieve Anything

Too often we allow ourselves to be controlled by people and circumstance outside of ourselves. It was Harold Sherman who said that the more you depend on forces outside of yourself, the more they will dominate you. When I’m in my seminars I often ask people to share with me the words they use to describe when they feel positive or negative. After people finish sharing the words they prefer I ask so who gets to choose how you feel. The audience responds in unison – you do.


I explain that it’s easy for me to stand up their on a stage and say you do, but in the heat of the moment when you’re under pressure is that what you do. I mean when you’re driving down the road and someone cuts you off it’s not always easy to remember that I get to choose how I feel right now. So we need to do more than simply acknowledge that we get to choose how we feel. We must live that message.

If you understand that you are in control of your emotional responses, you can break free from paying the role of the victim and take control over your emotions. This will allow you to maintain a positive attitude, have more energy, enthusiasm and self-belief in your own abilities, rather than be controlled by circumstances and other people.

The challenge of managing your emotional state is not limited to external pressures. You must also be aware of your internal dialogue. The messages we give ourselves have a profound affect on the results we produce. I have adopted a powerful formula to assist myself and my clients that comes from Tim Calloway. A tennis coach Tim observed that people’s performance could be measured by a simple formula. P-I = P. The letters stand for your Potential minus interference equals your performance.

Most people don’t live their potential. The average person’s performance is a long way from their potential best. The critical part of this equation is the aspect of interference. What interferes with your potential? Many of the barriers we face are the mental. They are our own limiting thoughts. It is the doubt we hold in our ability to be all we can be. On the wall of my office I have a poster that reads, “The highest fences we need to climb are those built within our minds”. While there is no doubt that there are times when outside factors can inhibit our progress the biggest obstacles for most people to overcome is their own thoughts. We need to recognise and eliminate the self limiting beliefs that are causing us interference. You have unlimited potential. You must know that without doubt.

When I train sales teams we explore the issue of trust. Without trust it is almost impossible to sell. But trust is not limited to a salesperson and a prospect, it extends out to the relationship you have with yourself. Do you trust you? Are you confident in your own ability or do you constantly doubt yourself? If you don’t completely believe in your own ability you will never fully commit yourself. You will tend to hold back from giving your all, allowing the doubt in your mind to distract you ultimately impacting the sort of results you produce. If you want others to trust you, you must first trust in your own ability.