People are not dealt the same hand in life. They all have different starting points.

We are all born with different talents and abilities. That’s a truism. 

However, we all have the choice to get better at what we do and, despite our starting point in life, we can often do something about it — to either get ahead, stay still, or slide backwards. 

I prefer to view success in life as a choice. But I know many people who see things differently. Some people attribute the success of others to luck, circumstances, connections, and even family ties. 

These people are free to think that successful people are successful because of luck, but if that’s how they want to view the world, then they haven’t really explained why successful people are successful. They’ve only given an excuse for why they are not. 

The bottom line is that successful people have made it because they had an opportunity (and they were prepared for it) and they made the most out of it.

We all get at least one chance to make it big in life. Some people refuse the opportunity, some people don’t recognize the opportunity, and some people waste the opportunity. So let’s discuss what that means and how it relates to where you are in your life and what can you do to make things better.

1. Don’t Be Unprepared

A lot of people waste their opportunities in life by refusing to work hard. They get offered an opportunity and start working at it but they quickly get tired. They start thinking that their opportunity doesn’t have much potential. They believe their opportunity will not lead to the future they desire. And they accordingly let go of that opportunity. 

They waste it.

That usually happens when the opportunity comes and they’re not prepared for it. They slacked off in the past. They didn’t invest in themselves and their abilities. And now they don’t have what it takes to take full advantage of the opportunities coming their way.

Some trivialize the opportunity. They think that working on their writing skills, communication skills and taking classes is not worthy of their time. They make fun of those that go to public speaking classes. They make fun of those that go to writing classes or marketing classes or business classes. They think such skills aren’t necessary for success.

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There are many others ways through which people waste opportunities. They procrastinate. They get lazy. They don’t commit. They would rather watch TV than to spend time getting reading for the next opportunity.

Some people learn from this mistake and they start investing in themselves. And they do so in order to hopefully get another opportunity and prove that they deserve it. Most people, however, will not. 

2. Opportunity Not Luck

A lot of people confuse opportunity with luck.

They think that having an opportunity means that their lives will change immediately. They think that they will become rich or successful very quickly. They think of opportunities in the same way as hitting the lottery; that the opportunity will simply get them to their goals with little to no effort on their part.

For example, you might find that there’s a good opportunity to start a business and to fill a need in the market. But if you don’t go all in and work hard every single day, you really won’t make much of your opportunity. In fact, it won’t pay off. 

There are many examples around us of people who conceived of great ideas and went after them only to quit too soon. A few months later, they see their ideas being implemented, and successfully so, by people who truly understand the hard work that takes to grow their business and reap the benefit of their hard work.

Sometimes, an opportunity to do big things might come in disguise. In fact, most big opportunities appear in your life because you took advantage of other smaller opportunities. For example, artists who took advantage of the opportunity to join a class early on in their careers and took that opportunity seriously will find themselves presented with better and greater opportunities later in life. 

The same goes for education. Did you pursue the opportunity to educate yourself and teach yourself new things or did you say you’ll take care of that later on? Did you take extra classes about things that matter to you and what you’re passionate about? These are small opportunities, but they are also the starting points for bigger ones.

So, think of life (and opportunities) as a “chains of opportunities.”

If you think of each opportunity as a necessary link to a better one, you will begin to take each small opportunity very seriously. So look at your your past actions with maturity, and ask of yourself to do something different. Ask of yourself to do better and to take advantage of the small opportunities even if they don’t pay off right away.

Sometimes you have to have faith that working as hard as you can and doing so as honestly as you can will open the door to better things. You don’t have to know. You just have to be honest with yourself about how hard you’re working. And things will happen. For me, that’s exactly what happened.