Do you feel like the number of opportunities available to you is starting to dwindle? Does it seem like there are fewer and fewer chances for personal and financial growth because things are contracting all around you?

Is that reality or just your perception?

What if I said that each of us is constantly surrounded by limitless opportunities, but that they often go unrecognized. Do you think that could be true in your case?

What kind of opportunities are you looking for? Do you want to expand your income, find a partner, start a new career, grow your consciousness, or establish some meaningful business or personal contacts? Ask yourself this:

What does opportunity look like?

That is an important question to ask, don’t you think? No matter what kinds of opportunities you are looking for, if you can’t identify them, then they are very likely to sneak past you unnoticed. When seeking opportunity, most people’s search criteria is so narrow in focus that it can essentially blind them to what is right in front of their face. It’s the old “can’t see the forest for the trees” scenario.

At other times, the opportunity itself is hidden from view but there are visible clues that we can follow. In cases like this, we need to recognize and follow the clues that will lead us to the opportunity we are seeking.  When looking for gold, miners don’t expect to find it just laying around on the surface of the ground. So how do they know where to look? They search for clues such as favorable rock formations, or deposits of certain metallic ores. When they find the right clues, then they take a closer look.

Sometimes opportunity is disguised as something else. There’s an old saying that goes like this: “The reason most people fail to recognize opportunity is because it often comes disguised as hard work.”

Whatever the case, if we broaden our parameters a bit, and use a little imagination, we can train ourselves to see opportunities that were previously hidden from our view. Let’s consider where opportunity is most likely to be found.

People are your greatest source of opportunity!

Regardless of what kind of opportunity you are looking for, there is someone, somewhere, who is in a position to help you. If you have a service to offer, there is someone who needs that service. If you have a product to sell, or an order to fill, It doesn’t matter what that product is or what you need to fill your order, somewhere out there are buyers and sellers that can help you.

The kind of opportunity you are seeking really makes no difference. Whether it is in the realm of products, services, guidance, assistance, or knowledge, your quest will end when you find the right person or group of people. People represent your greatest source of opportunities. Let’s take this concept and drill down a little bit more to make sure we understand how to use this resource.

What kind of questions are you asking?

Obviously, finding the right opportunity requires that we ask the right questions. Asking the right questions will ultimately lead us to the right people. This puts an entirely different spin on our search. Now, instead of looking for opportunity directly, we are looking for people. What kind of people? Well, it all depends on the kind of opportunity we are seeking.

If you are looking for employment, then start by looking for people with businesses that are still thriving, even in this economy. Don’t start out looking for the exact position that you would like to have, that’s too specific. If your search is too narrow, you may miss out on an opportunity for an even better position than you anticipated. So find the people whose businesses are thriving and look for a way that you can add value to their business. Be creative, and when you come up with a presentable idea, run it by them. Even if they don’t buy into your idea, they are likely to be impressed enough to offer you something else.

Your goal should be to become a viable asset to your employer by adding value to their business. The more valuable you are to them, the more opportunities will open up for you.

See yourself as a valuable asset

Your self-image will make a huge difference in the type of opportunities you attract to yourself. If you see yourself as a valuable asset, and you present yourself as such, others will see you that way as well. You never ever want to come across as needy or desperate. This is true whether you are looking for a job, a mate, or a business partner. Self-confidence encourages people to have confidence in you. Opportunities come to those who instill confidence.

It can be difficult to come across with self-confidence when you are in urgent need of the right opportunity. For someone who has been out of work for a while, with bills piling up, they may feel desperate. It’s extremely difficult to project the right image while harboring feelings of desperation. This is one of those situations where learning some specific life skills can help to overcome the mentality of scarcity.

Focus on creating opportunity for others

Some of your best opportunities will be born from your desire to create opportunity for others. This has been the driving force of many successful web based businesses. Let’s say that you have written a content rich ebook of incredible value, and you want to share it with as many people as possible. In order to accomplish that, you decide to price it well below the value of its contents. So you have created an opportunity for others to benefit from your hard work very inexpensively. Could you take it a step further?

What if you offered your customers an opportunity to share your book with their friends and earn a 70% commission in the process? Now you have created value and opportunity on two different levels. There is no way to foresee what kind of future opportunities will grow from an arrangement like this. One thing I do know is that this very strategy has launched thousands of successful internet businesses. Creating opportunity attracts even greater opportunities.

Always put people ahead of business

It is natural to want to help those that you like and respect. Work at building relationships with people and opportunities will follow. This is the principle behind the success of major social sites like twitter and facebook. It’s about relationships, and relationships are a give-and-take arrangement. Many business opportunities have come from these social sites, but the relationship came first.

The same principles apply to almost every aspect of life. If you are looking for opportunities, focus on establishing relationships and creating value first. Stay open to mutual opportunities and don’t be afraid to be generous. When you look for ways to help others you become a magnet for increased personal opportunities.

So look around, opportunity is knocking – are you willing to open the door and let it in?

Did you discover any hidden opportunities?
Are there untapped resources that came to mind?
The lines are open!

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My book TRUE SELF is the fastest inexpensive way (coaching is the fastest) to make positive life changes very quickly. Do you want to discover your core passions, dismantle your hidden, limiting beliefs, and realize your most desired goals? TRUE SELF will guide you smoothly through the process.

When you look at people who are at the top of their field, you will discover that they all have one thing in common. It really doesn’t matter what field they are in, they all do one, specific thing on a consistent basis.

Can you guess what that is?

They all create value for others, and in doing so; they also create success for themselves. This doesn’t happen by accident, it is 100% intentional.

Creating value for others is an extremely powerful success strategy for several reasons. Let’s examine some of those reasons and consider a few examples.

Increase your own value

When you create value for others, you become more valuable to them. Think about this in regard to your own life. Every single person who is important to you is, in some way, adding value to your life. The closer your relationship with them, the greater their contribution to your life.

What kind of contribution? Personal relationships are prioritized according to their emotional value. In some important way, having that person in your life makes you feel better about yourself. In business relationships, the value is generally measured by its effect on your bottom line.

A quantum shift

When we focus on adding value to other people’s lives, it completely shifts our perspective. We will naturally start to move away from selfish motives as we increasingly consider the welfare of others. This causes our own happiness and success to become a byproduct of our efforts to contribute to the happiness and success of others.

The more we focus on contributing in a worthwhile way to other people’s lives, the more our own happiness becomes bound up with theirs. This kind of community consciousness elevates our existence to a much higher level. Creating value for others expands our world, while selfishness shrinks it.

As our world expands, we become exposed to greater opportunities. As we act on those opportunities, it raises the value of our own lives. It’s a total win-win situation.

How can we apply this in our personal lives right now?

Start with your closest relationships. Look for ways to contribute to the lives of those around you. What can you do for your wife, husband, children, or friends to help them feel better about themselves? How can you bring a smile to their face, or a warm feeling to their hearts? As you take steps to contribute to their lives, notice how it makes you feel about yourself. You will soon notice a resulting increase in your personal sense of joy and satisfaction.

What about in business?

If you are an employee, find ways to become more valuable to your employer. Increasing your value at work adds to his bottom line, and his appreciation will add to yours. If you are an entrepreneur, look for ways to create greater value for those you do business with.

Here are three excellent examples:

1. In the extremely competitive world of online marketing, Jack Humphrey is a top social marketing expert. His entire success is built on the foundation of creating value for others. The more successful he becomes, the greater his dedication to helping others succeed. As a result, his success continues to grow as well.

If you are a blogger, or looking for ways to grow an online business, I highly recommend that you visit Jack’s site, the Friday traffic report. It’s an excellent source of truly valuable information that can help you succeed.

2. Next, consider Leo Babauta of Zenhabits. Leo has more RSS subscribers (close to 200,000) than any other personal development blog I know of. Why do so many people follow his blog?

The reason is simple. Leo’s readers find value when they visit this site. As a result, his readers tell their friends, and they tell their friends, and on it goes. So many people visit Zenhabits that he is able to make a full-time living as a blogger. That’s an amazing accomplishment.

And what is the foundation of his popularity? He creates massive value and sends it out there for others to assimilate. As they do, his popularity grows.

3. Another great example is Jonathan Fields of Awake At The Wheel. Jonathan used to be a lawyer, now he is a professional blogger, copywriter, author and more. Interestingly, you will rarely see him mention anything about his businesses on his blog. Why is that?

Again, Jonathan recognizes that if he creates enough value through the content of his blog, many of his readers will take the time to have a closer look. As they do, some will buy his books, others will become his clients. You see, he’s not worried about it. He is focused on creating value with full awareness that it will eventually come back to him in one way or another.

What’s in it for…?

So, you might be wondering, how have I benefited from mentioning these three people in this article? Actually, that is the wrong question to ask. The real question is – how have you benefited?

Well, that remains to be seen. Perhaps you are building an online business and you are looking for a marketing expert. Maybe you will find some valuable personal advice at Zenhabits that changes your life. It could be that Jonathan Fields will stimulate your thinking to the point of a personal epiphany.

Hopefully, you will at least be motivated to look for new ways to add value to the world around you. If any of these scenarios are true, directly or indirectly, I will have created value for you, and that’s good enough for me.

You never know

The possibilities are almost limitless. Perhaps you enjoyed this post enough to use the ‘share this’ button below to digg it, stumble it, or share it with a friend by e-mail. Maybe you will discover TRUE SELF and use it to completely transform the quality of your life. I really have no idea exactly how things will turn out.

First things first

The point is, create value first and don’t worry about how it is going to come back to you. Creating value is not bartering; we are not looking to make an even trade. It is more like making a deposit into the community human growth account. We all make deposits and we all extract benefits. We never know exactly how or when that is going to happen.

One thing we do know, if you make enough deposits you can eventually live on the interest, and that’s a beautiful thing.

So, I encourage you to go check out some of these other sites and see what you think. I also want to encourage you to leave a comment and let me know whether or not you benefited from this article. Your comments are one way in which you can create value for me and other readers. Right here is a perfect opportunity for you to make a deposit in that community human growth account.?

How do you create value?
How does creating value make you feel?
The lines are open!

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