You can make detailed plans for your future, but often times the best opportunities show up unexpectedly and are not something you plan for. They don’t show up at random though. On the contrary, I’ve realized that they tend to show up for people who tend to show up. In other words, if you make yourself a visible, active, hardworking participant in some field, people looking to give someone an opportunity will be much more likely to come to you. The result can be a totally unexpected chance to move your plans forward in a new direction.
Let me give you a recent example from our town. One good friend - let’s call her Anne (because that’s her real name), was a housewife with two young children. I am on our town’s Conservation Advisory Council, and I invited Anne to attend one of the meetings. She got very interested in one of the local environmental issues and did an enormous amount of work on it culminating in a presentation to the town board. Soon after that she joined another town council and became active there too.
When people were looking for some new to run for our State Assembly seat, guess who they decided to ask? One year ago Anne was a housewife taking care of two young children and getting somewhat board with the lack of activities in her life. Now she’s busy running for State Assembly, something neither she or her husband had in their plans. If she wins, that's a start of a major political career for her. If she looses, the contacts she made and the reputation she built up in the process will open up many new doors for her.
And all because she showed up and started to get involved on a small scale to begin with.
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