Anand Patel

By Anand Patel

As we close out the year, you may be looking for opportunities and new avenues to success in 2015. I’m here to tell you that you’re doing it all wrong.

The last few months, while speaking at REALTOR® associations as well as with my own agents, I have been sharing three specific thoughts that have been weighing on my mind as we wrap up 2014. I think that together, they can open up your life to success more than any attempt to hunt down “opportunity.”

“Opportunities? They are all around us…There is power lying latent everywhere waiting for the observant eye to discover it.”
–Orison Swett Marden, inspirational author and founder of Success Magazine

1. Everything happens for a reason.

I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase “hindsight is 20/20.” With that in mind, take a moment and look back at past events in your life that you may have initially perceived as negative and reevaluate them with the notion that everything happens for a reason. Perhaps it’s a negative comment someone said to you when you were young that stuck with you instead of a positive quality a teacher or parent saw in you. Maybe it was an event where you failed at something and instead of focusing on the lessons learned, you held onto the failure itself.  Looking back at these memories in this light will open you up to a totally new perspective. My father shared this notion with me over ten years ago that everything, EVERYTHING happens for a reason and nothing happens by chance. It took me a while to fully understand what he meant, but once I did interesting things began to happen for me.

2. Be present in the moment.

Being present in the moment means being aware of what is going on around us. It means starting up a conversation with the person behind you in line at the grocery store. It means saying hello to the person sitting next to you in an educational class at your local association. It means putting your cell phone away when having dinner with your family (I get in trouble for this one a lot).  It means picking up the phone and calling someone instead of texting them.  Being present in the moment means bringing real conversations back into your life. It means asking those around you “how can I help?”

To a certain degree, this will happen automatically when you truly believe everything happens for a reason. By understanding there’s a reason behind the people you encounter, events that happen, and conversations you engage in, you will inevitably begin to make the conscious effort to be present.

3. Opportunity surrounds us.

Understanding that everything happens for a reason and grasping the importance of being present in the moment now leaves you open to the opportunity that surrounds you. Remember that conversation in the grocery store? It turns out they are looking to buy a new home. The real estate professional you chatted with at the association event? She happens to have the perfect buyer for the unique listing you’ve had a tough time selling. When you put your cell phone away at the restaurant? You just had the most interesting conversation with your daughter who had been craving your attention all evening. That time you picked up the phone instead of texting? The conversation led you to finding the business partner of the new brokerage you just opened.

Sound crazy? I promise you, try it and you will be astounded by the number of opportunities that will come to you. If you spend your days looking for opportunity, in essence you are telling yourself opportunity is elusive and you have to seek it out. That is far from the truth.

By believing that everything happens for a reason, and by being present in the moment, we will begin to see that opportunity surrounds us everywhere. So as you prepare for 2015, don’t waste your time looking for opportunity, as it has been waiting for you all along.

Anand Patel is broker and president of Pangea Realty Group based in Tampa, Fla. You can connect with Anand on Twitter: @anand_tampa, Facebook: www.facebook.com/prgtampa, or LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/anandpatel1.