How many opportunities are you missing because they are hiding in plain sight?

Quite often everything you need to get started on a new endeavor or goal is hiding in plain sight. You just overlook it because it’s too obvious. And there’s also a part of your mind that lures you into believing that getting started must be more complicated then it is.

Here’s a great short story called Acres of Diamonds that does a beautiful job of illustrating the hiding in plain sight concept.

“The Acres of Diamonds story ”a true one” is told of an African farmer who heard tales about other farmers who had made millions by discovering diamond mines. These tales so excited the farmer that he could hardly wait to sell his farm and go prospecting for diamonds himself. He sold the farm and spent the rest of his life wandering the African continent searching unsuccessfully for the gleaming gems that brought such high prices on the markets of the world. Finally, worn out and in a fit of despondency, he threw himself into a river and drowned.

Meanwhile, the man who had bought his farm happened to be crossing the small stream on the property one day, when suddenly there was a bright flash of blue and red light from the stream bottom. He bent down and picked up a stone. It was a good-sized stone, and admiring it, he brought it home and put it on his fireplace mantel as an interesting curiosity.

Several weeks later a visitor picked up the stone, looked closely at it, hefted it in his hand, and nearly fainted. He asked the farmer if he knew what he’d found. When the farmer said, no, that he thought it was a piece of crystal, the visitor told him he had found one of the largest diamonds ever discovered. The farmer had trouble believing that. He told the man that his creek was full of such stones, not all as large as the one on the mantel, but sprinkled generously throughout the creek bottom.

The farm the first farmer had sold, so that he might find a diamond mine, turned out to be one of the most productive diamond mines on the entire African continent. The first farmer had owned, free and clear … acres of diamonds. But he had sold them for practically nothing, in order to look for them elsewhere. The moral is clear: If the first farmer had only taken the time to study and prepare himself to learn what diamonds looked like in their rough state, and to thoroughly explore the property he had before looking elsewhere, all of his wildest dreams would have come true.”

So how do you identify opportunities that might be hiding in plain sight?

You must change your perspective.

Now before I go on, let me make something very clear. I’m not suggesting that everything you need is there in front of you, or that you shouldn’t explore beyond your current environment, what I am saying is that very often you have what you need to get started, and getting started is the hardest part of any endeavor.

So, the next time you feel that you don’t have access to the resources you need to start a new endeavor, change your perspective by taking inventory of all that you do have. You never know, with enough time and attention you might just find what you need to get started hiding right there in plain sight.

P.S. Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed it, please share it with one person you love.