One door closes another door opens article can give us the principal that an opportunity may become closed or unavailable to us, but more often or not, if we allow or we stay aware, new opportunities will show themselves. See Being Aware, Awakening.
It is the onus of ourselves to take advantage of these chances or opportunities, as there could be a limited time period of time, or a Window of Opportunity. Miss this window of opportunity, and it may be gone forever.
Often we may find that a window or door of opportunity has been offered us, but when we go to enter we find that the door has been closed on us again, but we have been offered a set of keys.
Which key is the one to open the opportunity? That is the question.
I have worked with many people who have had problems, and they continue to live with those problems, they fail to leave those problems behind they, to look for other ways to solve their ways of doing things, living their lives. They fail to leave, and close the door and windows, and lock them afterwards.
Then there are those that leave the one door that has been closed behind them, see that new door or window of opportunity, only to be presented with a set of keys to unlock them.
They try the first key, but that fails to unlock the door or window. They try the second and that fails, The third and fourth, and so on, each failing.
Just like Pavlov and his conditioning of dogs, by ringing a bell each time they were fed, the dogs would link food and the ringing of a bell resulting in salivation, and when just the bell was rung, the dogs would salivate, so is the same with the trying of the keys failing to open the door or window of opportunity, people often give up.
Even though they have only tried one or two keys and have failed and there are many more keys left to try, they are conditioned to failure and give up trying.
Perhaps we give up to this conditioning too early, the next key could have opened the treasure chest.
Perhaps we failed to notice that the keys we tried were too small or too big for the keyhole, we failed to sort the keys into the most likely ones that would lead to success.
We should be more aware of our actions and choices to take advantage of opportunities, take action, and keep trying. As Charles C. Manz said, “Most failures are not really failures – they are simply challenges in progress“.
But we should also be aware that we are being “sold a pup”, being “led up the garden path” by the person offering the keys, the fact is that perhaps there is not a key to open the door or window.
Shops, businesses often advertise special offers, keys, to get shoppers into their store, but when we get there, the offer has already gone, has many conditions attached to it, or the product or service is poor quality. Low cost airlines advertise very cheap flights, but fail to tell prospective travelers that there are limited seats available, or that there will be a booking fee, a baggage charge, extra taxi fares to pay because of the distances to travel from far away airports etc, which when added-up will cost more than a scheduled airline.
Sometimes we are drawn into doing something when there is nothing for us in the beginning.