“Finding opportunity is a matter of believing it’s there.” – Barbara Corcoran

Believing it’s There

“You know me!”  He said.

I do know him!  He has a knack for finding opportunity.  It’s something I’ve watched him find over a period of more than twenty years.  At first, I thought he was just lucky.  But, when that luck seemed to be following him around like a pair of tight jeans I had to wonder.  Was there something beyond luck happening here?

This wondering necessitated a lengthy process of observation and comparison.  No.  I didn’t become some kind of weird groupie or anything of that sort!  I just spent the time and effort to become a close friend.  Because I wanted to be more like him.  And, the simple recognition of a need to find something, that wasn’t overtly visible, was in itself, an important nugget of discovery.

The people you associate with, your friends and collogues, will guide the trajectory of both personal success and belief.  Because I was spending more personal time with my admired person, his ways of thinking and acting started to naturally rub off on me.  Being with people means you’ll become like them.

Being like another person is more than simply dressing like them.  It also means their patterns of living will become yours over time.  These patterns will affect important lifestyle choices such as the places you frequent, what you do professionally, who you marry, behavior, what you do with your leisure time and how you think.  Of all of these impacts, and others I haven’t named here, perhaps the most important is how you think.

This was graphically confirmed to me one day by a ten-year-old boy who spoke of his reverence for one particular teacher in his church.  He said, “He teaches us more than just information, he teaches us how to think.”

His simple comment communicates a profound principle.  The art of thinking is more than just an ability to remember and rehearse events and facts.  The act of thinking is also woven into the fabric of belief.  People create what they think.  And, the creation process is multifaceted.

Creation is a mingling of the physical and the mental.  The two are fully integrated.  They are not divisible.  Barbara Corcoran, a businesswoman, investor, syndicated columnist, and television personality, was speaking of this principle when she said, “Finding opportunity is a matter of believing it’s there.”

She didn’t know it at the time, but she was describing the guy who started me on this process of discovery.

“You know me!”  He said.

I do know him!  Now I know him much better than I did, because a lengthy process of observation and comparison. Now, these many years later, he still has a knack for finding opportunity.  It’s something I’ve watched him find over and over again.  And, as I said, at first, I thought he was just lucky.  But, when that luck seemed to be following him around like a pair of tight jeans I had to wonder.  Was there something beyond luck happening here?

Believe there is.

Believe there is a path for you to follow. 

Believing it’s there is the first step!