Opportunity is not a lengthy visitor

When opportunity knocks, are you ready to open the door? Even more important, are you listening for its arrival in the first place?

You know as well as I do that the world moves fast. Really fast. An opportunity can come and go before you’ve even realized it was there.

Other opportunities can be right in front of us, for the longest time, before we see them. Hopefully we do eventually — and have the good sense to jump at them.

Then there are the opportunities you ask for. You can’t pass those up, either. Maybe you have to go to them, put yourself out there. But it doesn’t make them any less valuable.

Whether the opportunity comes to you or you go to it, you have to be willing to let it into your life and go where it takes you, without hesitation. As Stephen Sondheim wrote, “opportunity is not a lengthy visitor.” When it’s there, you have to make the most of it.

The key is to recognize an opportunity when it’s at your door. Be open to it, even if it doesn’t look quite the way you expected it might.

Sometimes, those opportunities are the most exciting of all.