Jump on the boat when it comes…

I was asked during the week what I am going to do next year and the honest answer was – I don’t really know.

While there are several possible opportunities on the horizon, there is also a chance that none of them at all will actually transfer into something positive for me.

When I thought about that for a while, I realised how important it is to remain positive and to carry the self-belief that, if those opportunities do not work out, others will come instead and I just have to try to make the most of them.

Making the most of them is hugely important, but it’s also imperative that I don’t sit around waiting for the ‘perfect opportunity’ and then realise though inaction, that I may have actually already let it slip by.

I was reminded of a story I heard years ago about a flood that swept through a town causing widespread devastation.

The flood waters were rising steadily and as they began to seep into houses, a rescue boat pulled up outside a house where a man was standing on the ground floor watching the water rise higher and higer and begin to seep under the door.

When asked by the rescue workers to hop in the boat, the man replied that he was ok, he would be safe and that he had great faith in God and God would save him.

The waters continued to rise and the man had to move upstairs where he watched from a bedroom window as another rescue boat pulled up and offered to take him to a safe place.

Again he turned down the offer, saying he would be fine and that God would save him.

The waters kept rising and the man eventually had to climb onto the roof of the house where, after a short while a rescue helicopter spotted him, offered to winch him away, and again he refused, saying God would save him.

An hour later the man had drowned in the rising waters and when he reached heaven he was a bit peeved and asked God why he hadn’t saved him?

To which God replied: “I sent you two boats and a helicopter, what more did you want from me?”

To me that story has always been one that says, when opportunities arise then go ahead and try to take them if you can.

Don’t wait until you are ‘ready’ because how do you even know if you are if you don’t try?

Of course nobody knows how things will ever pan out, but waiting around and doing nothing, thinking that everything will somehow come good by magic, is not the way to go.

Jump on the boat when it comes and enjoy the voyage of discovery it takes you on.

Because the only thing worse than wishing for opportunities, is wishing you hadn’t missed the boat when one had come your way…