Joe’s comment to the last post got me thinking. There are opportunities that present themselves all the time to us. They range from little gains to big wins and from little distractions to those that burn up our available time with little to no gain. The key to our success is to recognize the down stream impacts and benefits of the opportunities. Obviously, we can not predict the future. We can, however, apply what experience and knowledge we have to the logical progression of events that would follow if we decide to follow an opportunity. We can approach opportunities with disciplined perception. We can evaluate the potential outcomes prior to acting.

Instead of reacting with emotional short-sightedness and adding our own issues to the reality around us we can observe, evaluate and decide what’s appropriate for us. As Ryan Holiday shares in his book, The Obstacle is the Way, John D. Rockefeller had this cool-headedness.  With one of his first investment opportunities Rockefeller received approximately $500,000 back in the middle 1800’s to deploy in some oil fields.  However, “The opportunity didn’t feel right to him at the time, no matter how excited the rest of the market was-so he refunded the money and stayed away from drilling.”  Rockefeller obviously went on to make many excellent investments as well as others that he learned from along the way.  This is thinking and feeling prior to acting is a major component of managing the business of ourselves.