Recognize Opportunities

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 394.

Challenge Assumptions

Five skills you'll need

Why are some people luckier than others? It's usually because they set goals, work hard and master the following five skills for making their own luck:

Lucky people believe there's more than one right answer, so they question the status quo. This means examining belief systems, asking why things are done certain ways, seeking alternatives and developing solutions.

While walking the streets of midtown Manhattan, a new marketing graduate struggled with how to prepare his resume. When he noticed an available billboard near Times Square, he realized there was no reason why he had to print his resume on an 8-by-l 1-inch sheet of paper. He rented the sign for his resume and received five job offers before the end of the first week.

This means seeing ordinary things in new ways or perceiving patterns and making connections between seemingly unrelated ideas, objects or events. Try creating order out of chaos, seeing the commonplace with fresh perceptions and looking with "new eyes" at how things relate. Then, when you recognize opportunities, act on them.

As she underwent a diagnostic test during a routine medical check-up, a University of Maryland graduate biology student began thinking about how the test worked. She thought it could provide a low-cost, simple way to predict how patients with a certain family of diseases would respond to drugs with undesirable side effects. After the exam, she went to the library to review relevant medical literature. She also asked a professor to help her gather more detailed information from a local medical school that had used the diagnostic test during a study.

The data supported her idea, so she wrote and presented a detailed proposal for further research to a pharmaceutical company that makes such drugs. The company agreed to fund her research and provide her with clinical trial data to help with the study. After graduation, she was offered a position in the company's research laboratories.

v Comprehension check

o Answer the following questions using information from the article to support your ideas. Remember to use the article vocabulary to the maximum:

1. What is luck? What do you think of the definition given in the article?

2. What kinds of luck do you know? Describe each one.

3. What skills will you need when creating your own luck?

4. What does the expression “to question the status quo” mean?

5. How can you recognize opportunities?

o Explain what is meant by:

Silver lining

To make the most of one's chance good fortune

Chance favors the prepared mind

Preparation meets opportunity