Opportunities are floating around everywhere, yet they remain invisible to those who aren’t seeking them. Very often they appear as a problem needing a solution.

Several summers ago, college student Joe Keeley took a job as a nanny. Before long, people in the neighborhood began asking him if he had any college friends who would do what he was doing. That’s when I started thinking there might be an opportunity here, he says. Now he runs a flourishing seasonal business called College Summer Nannies which matches families with carefully selected nannies who have special skills and interests that fit the family’s needs.

Young Mr. Keeley is an example of the two most common ways in which opportunity appears: by summons and by serendipity. Summoned situations come after we have set a goal or made a decision to do something. For instance, you decide to set up a practice as a personal trainer and get busy finding clients. Everyone who hires you becomes a new opportunity to expand your business. By taking action you’ve drawn opportunity to you.

Serendipitous opportunities appear to be unplanned. Let’s say you have a client for your personal training business who happens to be a filmmaker and thinks you’d be perfect for a series of exercise videos he wants to produce. That’s a possibility you’d never considered, but once it’s proposed to you, it is an exciting idea and you start working on the production, planning the marketing and thinking of new ways to share your expertise.

Either sort of opportunity requires that you have opened your heart and mind to the possibility of favorable events occurring in your life and business.

Whether opportunity finds you by summons or by serendipity, it requires that you respond quickly or it will move elsewhere. When an idea gets your attention, stop and give it your thoughtful consideration. Does it fit into your current plans? Can you make room for it? Is it exciting enough to pursue farther? Might you want to pass it along to someone else? We are more likely to attract genuine opportunity when we’re willing to meet it halfway.

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