Everything Is an Opportunity: Turning Problems Into Opportunities

Turn your problems into opportunities

I truly believe one of the greatest skills and wisdom we can learn, is to not let anything go to waste: the present, your life, and especially opportunities.

Let’s take a quote from the famous Roman Emperor, Marcus Aurelius also known as the Philosopher King:

While it’s true that someone can impede our actions, they can’t impede our intentions and our attitudes, which have the power of being conditional and adaptable. For the mind adapts and converts any obstacle to its action into a means of achieving it. That which is an impediment to action is turned to advance action. The obstacle on the path becomes the way.” — Marcus Aurelius

He clearly makes a distinction between the actions we perform and our intentions, and how we have the latter within our control. Maybe this quote makes that concept more clear:

You are only responsible for the effort, not the outcome. — Bryant McGill

In the book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, there’s this concept called the “inside-out mindset”: First focus on that what’s the most within your control, before focusing on what’s least within your control.

“For every problem that you haven’t turned into an opportunity, I am one step ahead of you.”

Luck: creating opportunities

“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” ―Seneca the Younger

We can prepare ourselves by turning and seeing problems as opportunities. This, in turn, increases the chance for us to chase, meet, and grab “luck”.

“I’ve found that what most people call luck is often little more than raw talent combined with the ability to make the most of opportunities.” — Timothy Zahn

In fact, not preparing oneself not only causes you to miss opportunities, it can even turn the other way around:

“Bad luck is when lack of preparation meets reality.” — Eliyahu Goldratt

Our lives are much more within our control than we tend to believe.

My own story about creating “luck”: autism and social anxiety

I happen to have both autism and social anxiety. Since a young age, I saw them as problems, things that have to be solved and removed, or at least, as much lessened as possible.

However, since I have read books like Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, I began to see these labels as opportunities instead.

Opportunities for what? Opportunities to help other people with autism and/or (social) anxiety. I don’t need to completely reinvent my life or do years of research on what autism and anxiety mean, I already pretty much am an expert on these areas. That doesn’t mean I don’t want to know even more about them (and myself).

Practicing the art of creating opportunities

What are some things that you currently perceive as problems? Can you turn them into opportunities? How? And how would your future look like after turning them into opportunities?

Are there things that you already see as opportunities? Can you imagine how other people, if they were you, might see them as problems instead? What causes you to see them as opportunities instead?

Remember, everything is an opportunity.