Learning how to find and create opportunities in life are essential skills if you want to be successful.
As alpha-minded men and women, we can’t just sit on the sidelines of life, hoping for good things to happen to us.
Regardless of what you’re trying to succeed at:
- Dating
- Business
- Fitness
- Relationships
- Mindset stuff
- Or anything else
The fact of the matter is that in order to get anywhere in life, you need to make forward progress toward your life purpose and vision—and opportunities are basically situations that give you a tremendous amount of velocity, to help you bridge the gap from where you are now to where you want to be in the future.
But here’s the problem.
A lot of people get this twisted.
They think that opportunities in life are something they’re entitled to.
They think that opportunities should just fall into their laps without requiring any work or effort.
But these are beta lies that people tell themselves.
And to be honest, it’s sad—because people who lie to themselves about this are basically overlooking the massive potential to create an incredible life, legacy, and destiny.
See, the keyword here is ‘create.’
This is what alphas do. They create opportunity. (You can also find it, but that’s pretty much the same thing. Both require intentional, purpose-driven action and momentum.)
Here’s the truth that a lot of people don’t want to hear.
Waiting for an opportunity isn’t the proper course of action.
The proper course of action is to create it for yourself.
But how do you do this?
And then, how do you identify opportunity when it does present itself to you?
These are important questions.
And in this post, you’re going to learn my 10-step alpha mentality method for how to do it the right way.
Let’s dive into it.
What Are Life Opportunities?
Life opportunities are best defined as situations that you come across periodically in your journey that will give you the means to leap ahead and make great strides of progress in short amounts of time.
Ann Landers actually has an amazing quote on the topic that I think really fits with this mentality.
“Opportunities are usually disguised as hard work, so most people don’t recognize them.”
How Important Is An Opportunity In life?
Opportunity is massively important in life, and I’ll explain why.
For the most part, there are two different types of progress.
On one hand, there’s the grind.
Often in life, we work hard to inch ourselves forward little by little.
The going may be slow, and the process may be difficult.
But this is the nature of most of the work we do in our lifetime.
And there’s nothing wrong with that.
However, if you continue to make forward progress in life, then it’s inevitable that opportunity will end up presenting itself to you at some point or another (this is how you create opportunity for yourself in life—you have to grind your way into it).
When you properly identify and seize opportunities in life, you basically unlock the potential to jump further ahead in your journey—saving you a lot of time, effort, and resources.
This is why good opportunities in life are so important. And to be honest, it’s a fairly universally accepted truth that we should all be on the lookout for them.
Opportunities present you with a massive advantage.
Very rarely, people may be born into situations that offer them great opportunities.
But more often than not, successful people end up successful because they work hard to create opportunities for themselves, regardless of whether or not they had any to start with.
As alphas, this is the mindset that we must embody.
We must be determined to work hard (be the hardest worker in the room) to create as many awesome opportunities for ourselves as possible.
When we properly create opportunities in life, and then learn to identify and seize those opportunities, we can leap ahead in our journey and make big progress in short spans of time.
And that’s definitely a good thing.
5 Steps For How To Create More Opportunities For Yourself In Life
Alright. Let’s dive deep into these steps. I’m about to teach you how I’ve learned to create more opportunities in life. This is how I did it for myself (and continue to do it on a daily basis), and how you can do it as well.
1. Decide To Take Action
The first step in this process is to commit to taking decisive, intentional action.
This is what the alpha mentality is all about.
It’s about taking proactive measures to create the life you want, rather than just waiting for life or opportunity to happen to you.
If all you do is stand around waiting for opportunities in life, guess what?
You’re highly unlikely to ever find them.
So commit today to embrace the alpha mentality, and choose to take action to begin your hero’s arc—to discover and create opportunities for yourself.
(Do you want to learn more about the alpha journey, and what it really means to be an alpha man or woman? Consider subscribing to my YouTube channel, listening to my podcast, or joining my Mastermind Tribe.)
2. Decide On A Destination Or Direction
Having a vision and a plan for your life will give you huge advantages as you seek to create new opportunities for yourself.
Here’s the thing.
If you don’t know where you’re going, then you may not recognize amazing opportunities when you come across them.
When you understand your direction, and you understand what your purpose in life is—this gives you a lot of information that you can use to spot opportunities along the way.
So try to make a plan of action.
Try to visualize the outcome, and make a plan to get there.
3. Try New Things
If you keep doing the same things in life, you’re going to keep getting the same results.
There’s an old saying that I’ve heard a thousand times, and I love it—though I’m not sure who said it, and I’m not sure where it comes from.
“If you play stupid games, you’ll win stupid prizes.”
This isn’t how you create opportunities in life.
You create opportunities you’ve never had before by being brave enough and bold enough to do things you’ve never done before.
It’s always better to take action than to remain motionless.
Sometimes, this will force you to leave your comfort zone.
But then again, that’s what adventure is all about—right?
And in life, that’s what we should all want for ourselves.
We should all want to embark on our own hero’s arc, and begin the alpha adventure of our lives.
4. Overcome Challenges
As you embark upon your hero’s arc and begin your journey, you’re going to leave your comfort zone and run headfirst into many different challenges and difficulties.
This is normal.
In fact, this is how the journey should be.
No journey worth the trouble is going to steer you away from all potential calamity.
There’s no way to make forward progress without exposing yourself to a certain amount of risk.
As I often say…
“Nobody escapes unscathed, and no one makes it out alive.”
The only way to climb a mountain is to climb in the most difficult direction:
Upward.
The truth is that you’ll never create a victorious, meaningful life if you avoid difficulty.
Jordan Peterson, in his book 12 Rules For Life, says this—and I think it’s absolutely spot on when discussing this topic.
“Pursue what is meaningful, not what is expedient.”
In other words, do what you need to do and what you should be doing—regardless of if it’s difficult or not.
This is one of the most effective ways to unlock new opportunities for yourself.
This is exactly the approach that I’ve taken with this blog, my YouTube channel, my podcast, and also my private community/Mastermind Tribe.
It wasn’t easy to start this platform. But I knew that it was necessary. I knew that it was my purpose.
And the road hasn’t been easy. And yet, despite the difficulty, I’ve found tremendous amounts of opportunity along the way.
Had I never taken action and decided to climb the mountain, I never would have created or found these opportunities.
You need to take action to make things happen in life.
Oftentimes, we’re actually most likely to find opportunities when the going gets hard—and when, despite the difficulties, we keep moving forward anyway.
5. Provide Value For Others
As we move through life, we can choose to either only help ourselves, or to help bring value to other people as well.
Now, don’t get me wrong.
You shouldn’t sacrifice your own well-being for everyone else. And a certain amount of healthy selfishness is absolutely rational.
We have a responsibility to take care of ourselves and to make sure that we have what we need to operate at peak efficiency.
However, we should also make sure to set aside some time, energy, and resources to bring value to other people as well.
Among other things, this is a leadership principle.
Our goal and our purpose in life should also include creating value for others and helping other people.
If you reduce it down to the lowest common denominator, you could see this as being the difference between good and evil.
To a point, if your life and journey are entirely characterized by your own selfish pursuit of treasure and pleasure, you’re unlikely to leave a lasting legacy of greatness after you’re gone, or to make much of a meaningful difference in the world while you’re here.
By contrast, if you seek to make the world a better place—to be a servant leader that those in your tribe, family, circle, and community can look up to—well, that’s the stuff that real heroes (and real alphas) are made of.
How Do You Identify Opportunities In Life – In 5 Steps
Now that we’ve talked about increasing your odds for creating amazing opportunities for yourself, let’s talk about how to identify opportunities when they do come along.
1. If You See A Need, Strive To Fill It
Some of the greatest opportunities in life cross our paths in the form of a need.
It’s really that simple.
For example, back in 2009, I discovered that there was a need for writers to create content on the internet.
I had no idea that beginning this journey—a freelance writing journey that I knew nothing about to get started with—would lead to me having a 13+ year career in the industry—and that it would literally lead to me being about to create a six-figure income for myself.
See, opportunities in life are often disguised as vital needs in the marketplace.
So keep an eye out for them.
2. Watch For Areas Where Your Talents Could Be Of Use
If you have some very specific talents, or if you tend to be good at specific things, keep an eye out for people who may need them, or for situations where those talents might be useful.
For example, I’ve always had a talent for writing.
When I was younger, I didn’t really pay much attention to this talent.
It was just something that I could do, but I didn’t put much thought into it.
However, as I got older, I came to realize that the more I sought to leverage this talent to bring value to other people, the more opportunity I ended up creating in my life.
3. Use A ‘Value First, Payment Second’ Mentality
When I was first starting my freelance writing career, I was always paranoid that people were going to rip me off.
This is because I was living with a crippling scarcity mentality in life.
And so, I made a huge effort to try to get people to pay me in advance.
Now, to a point, there’s nothing inherently wrong with this strategy.
You have to use common sense, and you have to protect yourself.
However, the problem with my approach was that I wasn’t just using common sense.
I was operating with a ‘get paid first, provide value second’ mentality. And in truth, this mentality was actually holding me back and keeping me stifled by fear.
When I learned to let go of it and reverse this mentality, I started to find even more opportunity—because I started to be brave enough (and willing enough) to step into areas of need to fill them even when I wasn’t quite sure if they were going to end up being lucrative.
See, a value-first mindset always looks for the value that you can bring first, and then worries about whether or not there’s a payoff involved that could make it a lucrative endeavor.
And that’s a really important principle to understand.
Now, I’m not trying to say that you should do a bunch of work for free, and just hope that people pay you.
I’m not saying that. Once again, you need to exercise some wisdom.
It’s just all about the mindset and how you’re viewing the world, and whether or not you’re operating from a place of abundance, or a place of fear.
What I’m saying is that as you look for work, opportunities, connections, etc. always focus first on bringing value to the situation, and let that mindset be your compass and your beacon.
(This even works on the dating marketplace! Seek first to be a high-value man or woman, and you’ll quickly notice that dating opportunities are generally not far away.)
4. Pay Attention To Problems That You Want To Solve
When I first started my blog, YouTube, and podcast, I was driven by a passion for finding solutions to a particular range of problems.
I was passionate about wanting to help people fix their dating lives, have better relationships, and embrace the alpha mentality.
Nowadays, my passion for these topics has continued to grow.
But see, I didn’t start any of these projects with thoughts of getting rich, or by thinking about how much money they could make me.
This whole journey began because I was passionate about solving a problem, and I desperately cared about trying to provide a real, legitimate solution to it.
This is why I literally worked for years on my blog, spending my own money to pay for hosting and other expenses without seeing a single dollar of profit until only very recently (in 2022).
This has been a very rewarding journey that continues to grow, evolve, and create new opportunities for me year after year.
But it all started with me writing short little blog posts (all for free) to help provide some insight to other people who were maybe going through similar things as me.
5. Follow Your Passion And Purpose
At the end of the day, it’s crucial to let your passion and your purpose guide you.
I truly believe this.
I believe that it’s possible to find an opportunity by accident—but I also believe that it’s exceptionally rare.
The way I see it, and according to my research, the vast majority of successful people had a clear vision of what they wanted to achieve, and then they went for it.
For example, read the story of Arnold Schwarzeneggar.
His story was amazing! And yet, he created the vision for his life when he was just a boy.
Sure, he had to adapt and revamp his vision a few times. He had to adjust and pivot a few times. But that’s just part of life.
I truly believe that if you haven’t sat down and really thought about what you want in life, you’re probably missing out on massive opportunities—because if you don’t know what you want, how could you ever know if you’re missing out on it or not?
What Are My Opportunities As A Person?
I’m going to tell you the truth here. No bullshit, no nonsense. This is 1000% what I believe to be true, and I believe that everything I’ve seen, done, studied, and experienced in this life thus-far has proven it to be true.
The opportunities you get in life are going to be directly proportional to the amount of work you’re doing to achieve your goals and create a lasting legacy of greatness.
This is why I believe so much in the alpha mentality.
We must take action if we truly wish to succeed—there’s just no way around it.
Final Thoughts
I hope that this blog post has left a lasting impression on you.
I’ve been very fortunate to have found many amazing opportunities in life—but as far as I can tell, every single amazing opportunity that I’ve ever come across was only made possible because I decided on my own to take action, begin the journey, and start grinding my way toward success.
It’s just that simple.
Begin your hero’s arc—and at some point, you’ll inevitably find opportunity along the path.
And the longer you go without seeing it—well, the closer you probably are to finding it….
As long as you’re taking action and doing the work.
Go with grace, my friends. And never give up your power.
That’s all I’ve got for this one. See you next time…
Joshua K. Sigafus