I was suddenly reminded of a conversation I had with a friend a few years ago. He rang me up and asked me for a coffee because he wanted my advice.

As soon as we sat down he began to talk about how he had been offered a very high profile job which in his own words offered "prestiege, salary, brand, great perks, good team, great city,…"

 …the list went on and on and then he preceded to describe the opportunties the job would offer…

I stopped him halfway through (my listening may have improved these days) and said "I don’t understand why you need my advice"

"A lot of people have been telling me how great an opportunity this is. I have to give them an answer soon and I want to know what you think, and if you think I should take it?

"You want to know if I think you should I take it?" I spluttered.

In part he said it was because of my ownvaried professional choices. He seemed to be under the impression that I was somewhat impervious to some of the list (prestiege, good brand) - I am not - and also because he said that he knew I wanted nothing from him other than to enjoy his life and what he did - probably true. 

Now before you think ‘but if he needed to ask you for advice he probably didn’t want the job anyway’ I didn’t believe that at all, and still don’t. Sometimes we really do need to talk things through to someone impartial and so forth. But as I looked at him and listened more a question sprang into my mind: 

I looked at him and asked him to tell me one thing -

"Is this an opportuity for you?" 

He looked at me blankly - "I just told you what an opportunity it is…"

"No no…is this an opportunity for you? Whose opportunity is this? Because an opportunity is only opportunity if it is one for you - not your mother, you sister, your friends, the company’s…"

… 

Needless to say, he didn’t take much time to make the decision after that.

…

So I was sitting thinking about a particular ‘opportunity’ that had presented itself to me today and the question that flew into my mind was "whose?". And I thought I would share the story of where it came from.

 

PS encoded in this story are two pieces of advice I remember being given -

1. if you want to know a solution to a problem, go speak to a stranger. You’ll be surprised what can come out of the conversation and how many solutions you never thought of!

2. Be aware of the stories that are turning up for you / presenting to you. They also say a lot about where you are at.

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 4th, 2007 at 5:17 pm and is filed under conversation, dialogue, musings, questions, stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.