Think of that elusive “door”. Can you see it? Do you know what I’m talking about?

The door you want to be walking through. The door to the life you want. The door that changes everything for you. Everybody has a door in their lives. The door is whatever goals you have set up in your life. If you imagine what you want your life to be, walking through your door is how you get there from the life you have now.

Some people want the door to be opened for them. Some people are convinced it will always be locked and they don’t have the key. Some try to pick the lock. Others just want to run right through the darn thing. I, however, have a much simpler solution: knock.

Okay, enough with the metaphors, right? What do I mean? I recently read an article on marketing, and it actually got me thinking about life and the opportunities that are presented in it. Here’s what the author did to drum up more business for himself:

I finally decided that if I wanted something to happen, I had to go and get it. So I did the simplest thing I could think of: I just asked for it. I wrote to a bunch of different sites, and asked if they needed writers. I pitched a few ideas, used my blog as a resume, and offered my services.

I couldn’t give you an exact number, but the response rate to my emails was extraordinarily low. Let’s just say that if I were a baseball player with that batting average, I wouldn’t be a baseball player much longer. Only a couple of people responded at all, and a few of those turned into the jobs I got initially as a freelance blogger. But my batting average wasn’t high.

And it didn’t matter. For the opportunities that didn’t come my way, all it cost me was a few minutes of my time to send an email. The hour it took to write ten emails, even if it only generated one response, was well worth it just for that one response.

I got my dream job this summer from exactly the same thing: I sent an email. I can’t explain why it worked, or why I got a response instead of the hundred or so other people my boss got applications from. It worked, though, and for one reason: I asked. If I never heard back, so be it; it’s a wasted ten minutes. But I did, and it became a fantastic experience for me.

“Opportunity knocks”, right? Wrong. You can’t sit around and expect opportunities to fall into your lap. You need to take action. You need to take charge of your life and do something about whatever you don’t like. What are you afraid of? Failure? A lot of people don’t think they can handle screwing something up. Just think to yourself, What’s the worst thing that could happen? In most cases, the “worst thing” is barely anything that will matter to you beyond a day or so.

That’s why I want you knocking on doors. It’s simple, and it’s fairly painless. If you were going door-to-door with some flyers, the worst thing you can probably expect to happen is someone might yell at you to leave them alone or shut the door in your face. Apply that to the rest of your life: why are you so afraid of rejection? Embarrassment? Get over yourself. Knocking on doors is easy – everyone can do it, and eventually, you’ll find yourself knocking on the door you’ve always wanted to open.

Lonely? Go out and join some social gathering or group and talk to a few people. Maybe you’ll make some friends. Worst case scenario: you won’t, and you’ll be back where you started. Need a new job? Polish up that resume, send it out to a few places, and start calling companies. Worst case scenario: you won’t get a new job and you’ll be back where you started. Looking for love? Go out on a few dates and give some people a chance. Worst case scenario: one of you won’t be interested in the other, and you’ll be – that’s right – back where you started.

In each of these cases, and in most others, the worst case scenario is that your knocking doesn’t work and you’re back where you started. But at least by knocking, you are giving yourself a fighting chance. Stop giving up on yourself and your life. If you keep knocking, you’ll keep learning, and you’ll keep moving forward in life.

[The quote above is from the article, Can't Miss Marketing: Just Ask from Stepcase Lifehack.]

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