Wisdom-Trek / Creating a Legacy

Welcome to Day 137 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.

This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom.

The 7 Trails to Create Opportunities

Thank you for joining us for our 7 day a week, 7 minutes of wisdom podcast. This is Day 137 of our Trek. Yesterday we explored the six reflection points for life’s transitions. Today we are going to hike the 7 trails of creating opportunities. We cannot sit idly by and wait for opportunities to come to us. We must create opportunities for ourselves and others.  If you have any of your own observations, comments, or questions as we explore these nuggets of wisdom, please share them in the comment section of our daily journal pages.

We are recording our podcast from our studio at Home2 in Charlotte, North Carolina. Today is as busy as expected, but at least we are a bit more rested than we were yesterday.  There are so many opportunities in life to grow and excel if we are looking for them. With today’s technology those opportunities are more prevalent than ever. It does require that we step outside of our comfort zone, but that is what makes life exciting and worth our trek. Unfortunately, I think Thomas Edison was correct when he said,  

As we start on our Trek for today, we want to shift our mindset from looking for opportunities to creating opportunities.  There may be a fine line here, but if you are looking for opportunities, you are assuming that they are already available. Creating opportunity requires that we assemble the puzzle pieces of our life in order to create the opportunities that we desire. As we create these opportunities, we want to look at the 7 trails that will make a significant impact on our world each day.

As we continue on the trail for today, we pass by a beautiful clear lake nestled in the mountains, and it provides us a time to consider our ability to impact everyone that we meet, either in person or online.  In order to create those opportunities we desire, we must be seekers and have an unquenchable hunger to be difference makers. As I throw a huge rock into the lake, we see the ripples extending from it in ever-widening circles. In the same way, as we create opportunities, we will make an impact on our world that will send out never-ending ripples in our ever-widening circles of influence. This will allow us to “Be the change that you wish to see in the world” as Mahatma Gandhi shared.

Some of the points in today’s Wisdom-Trek come from a Ted talk by Kare Anderson who shared this insight,

Honing your greatest talents and skills through your authentic message is the key to successful contributions as an opportunity creator, which will lead you to survive and thrive in the fast-changing world. By making new opportunities through these 7 trails that we are hiking today, you have the capability of achieving immense accomplishments.

There is one caveat, though…To create real opportunities, you must focus on how others will also benefit from the opportunities that you create.  None of us live in a vacuum. We must always be looking for ways to help others improve, and in doing so, we will also be creating positive opportunities for ourselves. As we explore these seven trails, I will first ask you a question, “What opportunities can we create together, and how can we accomplish this?”

1. Become an Opportunity Maker for Others

It is essential to become an opportunity maker for others first! Everything else will naturally flow and follow. Jesus said it this way in Luke 6:31, "Do to others as you would like them to do to you."

2. Collaborate & Provide Support

It is a true art to collaborate with people that act, think, and process information differently than we do!