unimaginative handling, and out of the least brilliant
an immortal work may be shaped. Alfred Armand
Montapert, founder, owner and president of seven
large corporations operating for more than forty
years in the western United States, prefaces his
inspiring Success Planning Manual (Prentice-Hall Inc.
1967) with this illustration: ‘““You set your destiny by
what you make of yourself. Example: a bar of iron is
worth $5. If made into horseshoes it is worth $10. If
made into needles it is worth $40. If made into balance
wheels for watches it is worth $250,”

A great idea is worth to a person exactly what his
preparations enable him to make of it. The ability to
originate, to seize an opportunity, rests solidly upon a
person’s readiness. Unless he is prepared, the op-
portunity might just as well not come,

There is good authority for this statement. Pasteur
wrote that “Chance favours only the prepared mind.”
Consider Newton and the falling apple. If that falling
apple had not been noticed by a man well-equipped
for study of the happening, nothing unusual would
have occurred, But Newton was ready, and he put the
results of his research into the law of gravitation.

Put into action what your experience and study have
taught you. As Francis Bacon, Lord High Chancellor
of England, said in one of his essays: ‘Crafty men
contemn [disdain] studies, simple men admire them,
and wise men use them.”

Seeking versus waiting

Some people believe they would be equal to seizing
an opportunity if it came along, but are too lazy to
go looking for it. In another essay Bacon pin-pointed
those who are superior: “A wise man will make more
opportunities than he finds.”

The ability to make opportunities and seize them is
typical of the successful person, One who waits for
opportunity to dragoon him into effort, or who leans
heavily upon his friends, expecting them to find
opportunity for him, or who does not use every
moment of his time and every ounce of his energy and
ability seeking what he wants, lacks the will for action
and spurns his birthright.

Brutus says to his fellow conspirator Cassius in
Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar: ‘“‘There is a tide in the
affairs of men, which taken at the flood, leads on to
fortune; omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound
in shallows and miseries.” But the person who waits
for some legendary seventh wave to toss him upon a
delectable island will find that seventh wave a long
time coming.

The wise person is one who is determined to owe
nothing to fortune except opportunity. Appealing to
fortune is too often the resort of the idle-minded and
the feeble, of those who want accomplished by chance
the thing that they lack the initiative to do them-
selves. They are usually people who doubt their own
capacity, They do not assess and believe in their own
worth. :

In fact, fortune plays a less considerable part in life

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than many people believe. What a person does in spite
of circumstances, rather than because of them, is the
measure of his success ability, What is called “good
fortune’ is nearly always the result of a group of
circumstances worked into productive soil by a clever
and industrious person.

“Four things come not back’’, says an Arabian
proverb: ‘‘the spoken word, the sped arrow, the past
life, and the neglected opportunity.” It is easy to let
life slide by, as children at the seashore fill their hands
with sand and let the grains flow through their fingers
until all are gone, but it is mentally unhealthy for
mature people to let opportunities slip away like that.

Dealing with difficulties

Difficulties beset all beginnings. If ill success has
attended your effort to make use of an opportunity,
do not charge the failure to some shadowy being called
“ill luck”, but examine carefully into the cause. Face
failure with a stout heart, and try again. Disappoint-
ment in one effort often opens doors to wider fields,
and, anyhow, it is more bearable to fail if we do our
best in an effort than to not fail because we did not try.

Some persons may say that advanced years prevent
their seeking opportunity. The search need not cease
at the end of one’s normal working life. A person must
have some place to go in the mornings, even in
retirement, and where better than into the search for
opportunity,

A person of 65 cannot be expected to carry the
physical load he toted with ease when he was 35. He
can, however, seek opportunity with the ardour of
youth; opportunity to use his store of knowledge and
experience in new situations.

Any person can have, at any age, an objective, for
objectives are endless. Every one you reach brings new
objectives into view. “‘Endless ends”’, said John Dewey,
the philosopher who wrote Human Nature and Con-
duct, ‘is a way of saying that there are no ends — that
is, no fixed self-enclosed finalities.”’

The secret of being productive through seizing
opportunities lies in getting into the habit of living
with expectancy. It will make your eyes sharper in
their search for opportunity. Looking for opportunities
and taking advantage of them makes life worth living.
There are many tough questions plaguing. business
and society, but no matter how many answers have
been turned up the best may have been left for you.

Opportunities exist for you whatever your job is.
Canada is advancing on many fronts. The small
promise of a century ago has grown into great op-
portunity. The subsistence husbandry. has developed
into world-wide trade. Where there was one op-
portunity fifty years ago there are now fifty.

Vigilance in watching for opportunity, tact and
courage in seizing upon opportunity, force and
persistence in crowding opportunity to its utmost of
possible achievement: these qualities promise suc- '
cessful living. °

© THE ROYAL BANK OF CANADA 1975/PRINTED IN CANADA