When Opportunity Exceeds Public Awareness

By Eddie Griffin

Friday, May 15, 2009

I am convinced that there are more opportunities out there in the world than people who are aware of them. As a community activist, I am flood with information daily, about job openings, about youth summer employment and programs, about scholarships and internships, about donors willing to give to a good cause, about potential volunteers who would donate their services if they only knew where to plug in. And so, the list goes on. But the people who would benefit the most are vaguely aware of these opportunities.

Maybe we can begin with the “Reticular Activating System”, a concept taught to me by motivational speaker Les Brown. People look for what they expect to find, and most people do not look to find opportunities, let alone the “opportunity of a lifetime”.

The second hypothesis is our ill-designed information distribution system. We simply are not getting the information to the people who need it the most. And considering the public’s lack of appetite for reading material, we employ the wrong format to reach our audience.

Where do you find these people who need these opportunities? Remember, most of them are not looking for opportunities. They search primarily for something more immediate, something that will scratch today’s itch, leaving tomorrow to fend for its self.

The Reticular Activating System requires visualization and comparison. For Les Brown’s example, suppose I bought a red Volvo. I drive up and down the highway through traffic and barely pay attention to the rest of the cars. But a red Volvo, just like my own, “jumps out” at me.

Why? There is something going on inside the head, on the subliminal level.

Using the same principal and utilizing Visualization, we can envision a map of the future, the place where we would like to be in our lives, the ideal goal and lifestyle.

What do we envision? What is it that we would like to be? How would we like to live?

Here comes the hard question: How clearly can you see this Vision?

Some people draw a blank. And, where there is no Vision, the people perish.

But those with a vision are challenged to attain their goals. If the Vision is clearly embedded in the mind, on the subliminal level, then opportunities towards reaching their goals will jump out at them like that red Volvo.

Les Brown taught this lesson to a group of prisoners at Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary. This was his way of “giving back” to the community, he claimed.

What good did the lesson do?

I was in that audience. I envisioned freedom. I envisioned an ultra-modern world of computers, glass skyscrapers, and widespread automation, microwave ovens, calculators, and highways in the sky. Time had stopped for me in 1972. It would start back in the Orwellian futuristic year of 1984. I anticipated “Future Shock”, as described by Alvin Toffler, a quantum leap into an unknown world.

By the grace of God, on April 26, 2009, I celebrated my Silver Anniversary of Freedom. Success may be defined as that point in time when preparation meets opportunity. Getting information to an unprepared people is like giving a newspaper to the blind.