How not to waste your opportunity

By Bayo Ogunmupe     When opportunity knocks at your door, don't waste it. Your turn will come, that is guaranteed. Just don't waste or screw it up. My message today is how you can stop yourself from wasting your opportunity. An opportunity offers you the chance of leaving a legacy behind in the minds of those who adored what you did when power came to your turn. Don't let your turn at power make your ego come out and ruin everything. Don't become a knob that treats people poorly. The solution to pride is to remember where you came from. Remember who you were before it was your turn. Moreover, remember what it was like to have no opportunity; sitting in your room at night, hoping and praying that a big break would come. never be cocky or fall in love with yourself and the success you are about to achieve.     When that once in a lifetime opportunity comes, show us how much it means to you by displaying unwavering amount of passion. Put your heart and soul into it by letting the  passion  the job bleed from your eyes. Leave us speechless with your passion and your drive to be better than you used to be. Your passion shows that you are alive and ready for the success that is about to follow. Your passion excites us into finding our own breakout opportunity. Your passion links us all to everything you do. Your being passionate becomes infectious to everyone around you. Say "thank you" in short service messages (SMS), emails and personal calls to all the people who helped you along the way. Never forget your time didn't arrive on its own. People helped  you get your turn.     Subsequent upon gaining your opportunity, it comes down to what you want to do with it.  To succeed, you must give it everything you have got. A good report means you are deserve the opportunity. This is the time to double your efforts. If you wrote four articles per week before, now that you are in charge you must write eight. Having the opportunity is only the first step.  It is what you do with it that counts. Remember, this happens only once in a lifetime. You could be a decade away from your next opportunity. Understand how scarce it is to get your turn; which is why you have to help others for them to get theirs. The point is that gaining your opportunity you are meant to use it to inspire, build and create something bigger than yourself. That's the hidden rule that no one tells you in life.     So, aim at doing something great through your work and the opportunity you have gained. Thus, being human is to be generous, compassionate and sympathetic to everyone on your path. It means you will lower your own importance, you are to dazzle us with ability and creative problem solving. Your ability to be humble while achieving your potential, and it being your time, is one of the hardest things you will ever do in life. It will make you one that will forever be etched in the minds of humanity. Such a perfect experience of success can never be bought, because it is unexpected. When one area of your life experiences growth another area becomes stale. So is the desire for great riches. The delusion is that when you have lots of money, it takes all the areas of your life up. That isn't true.     Making money only takes a percentage of your time; other areas grope attention thus breeding unhappiness. The question then becomes, What are you willing to give up for your dream? The truth is that no one cares how much money you make. The few who care how much you own, only care because they believe it will help them to make money too. You don't want those leeches in your life, do you? People are only inspired by how you achieved the impossible and made your dream come true. Therefore, remember, your turn will come, just don't waste it. Don't allow a boated ego destroy you like it did to some state governors in Western Nigeria.