Eben Pagan - Opportunity: How to Win in Business and Create a Life You Love

Copyright 2019 by Eben Pagan

Published in the United States by: Hay House, Inc.: www.hayhouse.com

Published in Australia by: Hay House Australia Pty. Ltd.: www.hayhouse.com.au

Published in the United Kingdom by: Hay House UK, Ltd.: www.hayhouse.co.uk

Published in India by: Hay House Publishers India: www.hayhouse.co.in

Cover art: Android Jones Cover design: Joe Muscatello

Interior design: Glen M. Edelstein, Hudson Valley Book Design

Image on pg. : CC by-SA 3.0

Image on pg.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any mechanical, photographic, or electronic process, or in the form of a phonographic recording; nor may it be stored in a retrieval system, transmitted, or otherwise be copied for public or private useother than for fair use as brief quotations embodied in articles and reviewswithout prior written permission of the publisher.

The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

First edition (978-1-7321246-0-8) published 2018 by Go Meta Publishing, Eben Pagan

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018958290

Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4019-5709-4

e-book ISBN: 978-1-4019-5710-0

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

1st edition, January 2019

To my wife, Annie.

Thank you for my greatest opportunity...

to be together with you, in Love.

A lumberjack, a botanist, and a monk walk into a forest. What do they see? The botanist sees plants to study, the lumberjack sees trees to chop down, and the monk sees the miracle of existence. Three people, three different perspectives on reality.

Each of us moves through the world perceiving things through our own unique prisms of personality and experience. We are born with similar senses, but we each live in our own version of reality, and the way we see reality impacts the way we perceive opportunity.

Now imagine three people walking into a grocery store. One might see an opportunity to buy tomatoes on sale, another sees an opportunity to socialize, and the third sees an opportunity to start a better grocery store down the street. Each of us is naturally on the lookout for opportunity in our own unique way, but we can train ourselves to see the world and opportunity in new ways.

Thats what this book is about. Inside, I aim to convince you of three simple, powerful truths:

• Understanding opportunity is a key to success in life.
• You can increase the quantity and quality of opportunities in your life.
• There is a reliable, systematic way to do it.

With this mindset, youll be better able to navigate through a world where change is accelerating and uncertainty is increasing a world that demands new models for thinking about how things work.

Creating opportunity is about more than just thriving in an unstable, sometimes scary world. Its about becoming the best version of yourself and creating a life where you have all the opportunities you need to reach your full potential.

To increase the quality and quantity of opportunity available to you, its important to take on a series of mindsets that will positively change how you see yourself, how you see others, and how you see opportunity.

What Youll Get from This Book

This book is a summary of the most important tools and models that Ive learned for creating more opportunity in your life. Within these chapters, youll learn:

• What opportunity is, how it works, and where to find it
• How to overcome opportunity shock and avoid the paralysis that can come with having too many options
• How your emotional state influences your ability to take advantage of opportunity and how to optimize your state to attract and capitalize on opportunity across different domains of your life
• How to overcome fear of failure, so you can get more of what you want in your life
• What mental models are, and how to use them for estimating the value of an opportunity, comparing opportunities to each other, and choosing those most likely to bring you success and fulfillment
• How to find more opportunities in business, money, investing, health, happiness, relationships, and personal development
• Why collaborating with others multiplies your power to find and develop opportunities
• How to become an innovator and a thought leader in order to help others discover their own biggest opportunities
• The way to discover your greatest personal opportunity in life

I think of this book as a surfboard designed to help you ride the tsunami of opportunity coming in the future. It will teach you to understand and profit from the changes happening around us all. If you use what you learn in this book, it will help you uncover a huge amount of opportunity that currently exists in your life, which was previously hidden. By discovering these opportunities, you will accelerate your growth to the next level in your life and business.

My Promise to You, the Reader

Have you ever been here?

• You are doing a project in your life and are interrupted by someone who wants you to do something completely different. Both projects seem important. How do you figure out which is the better opportunity for you?
• You have a great opportunity in front of you, and youre about to act on it, but doubt creeps in. You feel afraid, because you might make a mistake either way. What do you do?
• You have a new business or investment opportunity, but you dont know how to estimate its value or its probability of success. Different people are telling you different things, and youre getting confused. How do you make a decision and choose the right path?
• You feel stuck in your current work and dont feel like you have enough opportunity coming to you. How do you set up your life, relationships, and career so that more and more high-quality opportunities show up on your doorstep?
• You get a good business idea and want to find the fastest way to know if its going to be a winner. You ask a few experts in the domain to see what they think but get conflicting advice. How can you do a quick test to see if your idea is viable and likely to make money?
• You have saved up enough to make a big investment. As you start considering your options, you realize that there are far too many ways to invest than you could ever understand. Where should you start, and how should you choose an investment thats safest and most likely to make you money in the long-run?
• You have a new opportunity in your personal or family life, but it will take your attention away from your business and work. How do you choose between very different types of opportunity that dont seem to be comparable?
• Your new business idea is starting to work, and youre ready to scale it up into something big. Whats the best and fastest way to grow your company, so that it brings you sustainable profits?
• You get a great opportunity in business, but realize that taking it might make you unhappy in the long-run. How do you balance your desire for success with your need for happiness in life?
• You find a unique opportunity to work on a project that would teach you important skills that you need to learn but its risky, and might not work. Your friends and family are telling you to do something safer. If the project fails, you might look bad to people you care about. What do you do?