by 50 Cent
According to conventional wisdom, an opportunity is something that exists out there in the world; if it comes our way and we seize it, it brings us money and power. This could be a particular job, the perfect fit for us; it could be a chance to create or join a new venture. It could be meeting the appropriate person. In any event, it depends on being at the right place at the right time and having the proper skills to take advantage of this propitious moment. We generally believe there are only a few such golden chances in life, and most of us are waiting for them to cross our path.
This concept is extremely limited in scope. It makes us dependent on outside forces. It stems from a fearful, passive attitude towards life that is counterproductive. It constrains our minds to a small circle of possibility. The truth is that for the human mind, everything that crosses its path can be a potential tool for power and expansion.
Many of us have had the following experience: we find ourselves in an urgent, difficult situation. Perhaps we have to get something done in an impossibly short amount of time, or someone we had counted on for help does not come through, or we are in a foreign land and must suddenly fend for ourselves. In these situations, necessity crowds in on us. We have to get work done and figure out problems quickly or we suffer immediate consequences. What usually happens is that our minds snap to attention. We find the necessary energy because we have to. We pay attention to details that normally elude us, because they might spell the difference between success and failure, life and death. We are surprised at how inventive we become. It is at such moments that we get a glimpse of that potential mental power within us that generally lies untapped. If only we could have such a spirit and attitude in everyday life.
This attitude is what we shall call “opportunism.” True opportunists do not require urgent, stressful circumstances to become alert and inventive. They operate this way on a daily basis. They channel their aggressive energy into hunting down possibilities for expansion in the most banal and insignificant events. Everything is an instrument in their hands, and with this enlarged notion of opportunity, they create more of it in their lives and gain great power.
Perhaps the greatest opportunist in history is Napoleon Bonaparte. Nothing escaped his attention. He focused with supreme intensity on all of the details, finding ways to transform even the most trivial aspects of warfare—how to march and carry supplies, how to organize troops into divisions—into tools of power. He ruthlessly exploited the slightest mistake of his opponents. He was the master at turning the worst moments in battle into material for a devastating counterattack.
All of this came out of Napoleon’s determination to see everything around him as an opportunity. By looking for these opportunities, he found them. This became a mental skill that he refined to an art. This power is open to each and every one of us if we put into practice the following four principles of the art.
MAKE THE MOST OF WHAT YOU HAVE
In 1704, a Scottish sailor named Alexander Selkirk found himself marooned on a deserted island some four hundred miles off the coast of Chile. All he had with him was a rifle, some gunpowder, a knife, and some carpenter’s tools. In exploring the interior, he saw nothing but a bunch of goats, cats, rats, and some unfamiliar animals that made strange noises at night. It was a shelterless environment. He decided to keep to the shoreline, slept in a cave, found enough to eat by catching fish, and slowly gave way to a deep depression. He knew he would run out of gunpowder, his knife would get rusty, and his clothes would rot on his back. He could not survive on just fish. He did not have enough supplies to get by and the loneliness was crushing. If only he had brought over more materials from his ship.
Then suddenly the shoreline was invaded by sea lions; it was their mating season. Now he was forced to move inland. There, he could not simply harpoon fish and sit in a cave brooding. He quickly discovered that this dark forest contained everything he needed. He built a series of huts out of the native woods. He cultivated various fruit trees. He taught himself to hunt the goats. He domesticated dozens of feral cats—they protected him against the rats and provided him much needed companionship. He took apart his useless rifle and fashioned tools out of it. Recalling what he learned from his father, who had been a shoemaker, he made his own clothes out of animal hides. It was as if he had suddenly come to life and his depression disappeared. He was finally rescued from the island, but the experience completely altered his way of thinking. Years later he would recall his time there as the happiest in his life.
Most of us are like Selkirk when he first found himself stranded—we look at our material resources and wish we had more. But a different possibility exists for us as well—the realization that more resources are not necessarily coming from the outside and that we must use what we already have to better effect. What we have in hand could be research material for a particular book, or people who work within our organization. If we look for more—information, outside people to help us—it won’t necessarily lead to anything better; in fact the waiting and the dependence makes us less creative. When we go to work with what is there, we find new ways to employ this material. We solve problems, develop skills we can use again and again, and build up our confidence. If we become wealthy and dependent on money and technology, our minds atrophy and that wealth will not last.
TURN ALL OBSTACLES INTO OPENINGS
The great boxer Joe Louis encountered a tremendous obstacle in the racism of the 1930s. Jack Johnson had preceded Louis as the most famous black boxer of his time. Johnson was supremely skilled and he beat his white opponents with ease, but he was an emotional fighter—encountering hostile crowds that chanted “Kill the nigger” only made him more heated and angry. He found himself in constant trouble and quickly burned out from all the hatred.
Louis was equally talented, but as he perceived it, he could not gloat or show emotion in the ring—that would incite the white audiences and feed into the stereotype of the out-of-control black boxer. And yet a fighter thrives off his emotions, his fighting spirit, and uses this to overwhelm his opponent. Instead of rebelling against this state of affairs or giving up, Louis decided to use it to his advantage. He would show no emotions in the ring. After knocking someone out, he would calmly return to his corner. Opponents and the audience would try to bait him into an emotional response, but he resisted. All of his spirit and anger went into forging this cold and intimidating mask. The racists could not rail against this. He became known as the “Embalmer,” and it was enough to see his grim expression when you entered the ring to feel your legs getting weak. In essence, Louis turned this obstacle into his greatest strength.
An opportunist in life sees all hindrances as instruments for power. The reason is simple: negative energy that comes at you in some form is energy that can be turned around—to defeat an opponent and lift you up. When there is no such energy, there is nothing to react or push against; it is harder to motivate yourself. Enemies that hit you have opened themselves up to a counterattack in which you control the timing and the dynamic. If bad publicity comes your way, think of it as a form of negative attention that you can easily reframe for your purposes. You can seem contrite or rebellious, whatever will stir up your base. If you ignore it, you look guilty. If you fight it, you seem defensive. If you go with it and channel it in your direction, you have turned it into an opportunity for positive attention. In general, obstacles force your mind to focus and find ways around them. They heighten your mental powers and should be welcomed.
LOOK FOR TURNING POINTS
Opportunities exist in any field of tension—heated competition, anxiety, chaotic situations. Something important is going on and if you are able to determine the underlying cause, you can create for yourself a powerful opportunity.
Look for any sudden successes or failures in the business world that people find hard to explain. These are often indications of shifts going on under the surface; perhaps someone has inadvertently hit upon a new model for doing things and you must analyze this. Exa
mine the greatest anxieties of those on the inside of any business or industry. Deep changes going on usually register as fear to those who do not know how to deal with them. You can be the first to exploit such changes for positive purposes.
Keep your eye out for any kind of shifts in tastes or values. People in the media or the establishment will often rail against these changes, seeing them as signs of moral decline and chaos. People fear the new. You can turn this into an opportunity by being the first to give some meaning to this apparent disorder, establishing it as a positive value. You are not looking for fads, but deep-rooted changes in people’s tastes. One opportunity you can always bank on is that a younger generation will react against the sacred cows of the older generation. If the older set valued spontaneity and pleasure, you can be sure that the younger set will crave order and orthodoxy. By attacking the values of the older generation before anyone else, you can gain powerful attention.
MOVE BEFORE YOU ARE READY
Most people wait too long to go into action, generally out of fear. They want more money or better circumstances. You must go the opposite direction and move before you think you are ready. It is as if you are making it a little more difficult for yourself, deliberately creating obstacles in your path. But it is a law of power that your energy will always rise to the appropriate level. When you feel that you must work harder to get to your goal because you are not quite prepared, you are more alert and inventive. This venture has to succeed and so it will.
This has been the way of powerful people from ancient to modern times. When Julius Caesar was faced with the greatest decision of his life—whether to move against Pompey and initiate a civil war or wait for a better moment—he stood at the Rubicon River that separated Gaul from Italy, with only the smallest of forces. Although it seemed insanity to his lieutenants, he judged the moment right. He would compensate for the smallness of his troops with their heightened morale and his own strategic wits. He crossed the Rubicon, surprised the enemy, and never looked back.
When Barack Obama was contemplating a run for president in 2006, almost everyone advised him to wait his turn. He was too young, too much of an unknown. Hillary Clinton loomed over the scene. He threw away all their conventional wisdom and entered the race. Because everything and everyone was against him, he had to compensate with energy, superior strategy, and organization. He rose to the occasion with a masterful campaign that turned all of its negatives into virtues—his inexperience represented change, etc.
Remember: as Napoleon said, the moral is to the physical as three to one—meaning the motivation and energy levels you or your army bring to the encounter have three times as much weight as your physical resources. With energy and high morale, a human can overcome almost any obstacle and create opportunity out of nothing.
Reversal of Perspective
In modern usage, “opportunist” is generally a derogatory term that refers to people who will do anything for themselves. They have no core values beyond promoting their own needs. They contribute nothing to society. This, however, is a misreading of the phenomenon and stems from an age-old elitism that wants to see opportunities kept as privileges for a powerful few. Those from the bottom who dare to promote themselves in any way are seen as Machiavellian, while those already on the top who practice the same strategies are merely smart and resourceful. Such judgments are a reflection of fear.
Opportunism is in fact a great art that was studied and practiced by many ancient cultures. The greatest ancient Greek hero of them all, Odysseus, was a supreme opportunist. In every dangerous moment in his life, he exploited some weakness his enemies left open to trick them and turn the tables. The Greeks venerated him as one who had mastered life’s shifting circumstances. In their value system, rigid, ideological people who cannot adapt, who miss all opportunities, are the ones who deserve our scorn—they inhibit progress.
Opportunism comes with a belief system that is eminently positive and powerful—one known to the Stoic philosophers of ancient Rome as amor fati, or love of fate. In this philosophy every event is seen as fated to occur. When you complain and rail against circumstances, you fall out of balance with the natural state of things; you wish things were different. What you must do instead is accept the fact that all events occur for a reason, and that it is within your capacity to see this reason as positive. Marcus Aurelius compared this to a fire that consumes everything in its path—all circumstances become consumed in your mental heat and converted into opportunities. A man or woman who believes this cannot be hurt by anything or anyone.
WITHOUT DOUBT, PRINCES BECOME GREAT WHEN THEY OVERCOME DIFFICULTIES AND HURDLES PUT IN THEIR PATH. WHEN FORTUNE WANTS TO ADVANCE A NEW PRINCE…SHE CREATES ENEMIES FOR HIM, MAKING THEM LAUNCH CAMPAIGNS AGAINST HIM SO THAT HE IS COMPELLED TO OVERCOME THEM AND CLIMB HIGHER ON THE LADDER THAT THEY HAVE BROUGHT HIM. THEREFORE, MANY JUDGE THAT A WISE PRINCE MUST SKILLFULLY FAN SOME ENMITY WHENEVER THE OPPORTUNITY ARISES, SO THAT IN CRUSHING IT HE WILL INCREASE HIS STANDING.
—Niccolò Machiavelli
CHAPTER 4
Keep Moving—Calculated Momentum
IN THE PRESENT THERE IS CONSTANT CHANGE AND SO MUCH WE CANNOT CONTROL. IF YOU TRY TO MICROMANAGE IT ALL, YOU LOSE EVEN GREATER CONTROL IN THE LONG RUN. THE ANSWER IS TO LET GO AND MOVE WITH THE CHAOS THAT PRESENTS ITSELF TO YOU—FROM WITHIN IT, YOU WILL FIND ENDLESS OPPORTUNITIES THAT ELUDE MOST PEOPLE. DON’T GIVE OTHERS THE CHANCE TO PIN YOU DOWN; KEEP MOVING AND CHANGING YOUR APPEARANCES TO FIT THE ENVIRONMENT. IF YOU ENCOUNTER WALLS OR BOUNDARIES, SLIP AROUND THEM. DO NOT LET ANYTHING DISRUPT YOUR FLOW.
The Hustler’s Flow
THE OLD MUSICIANS STAY WHERE THEY ARE AND BECOME LIKE MUSEUM PIECES UNDER GLASS, SAFE, EASY TO UNDERSTAND, PLAYING THAT TIRED OLD SHIT OVER AND OVER AGAIN…. BEBOP WAS ABOUT CHANGE, ABOUT EVOLUTION. IT WASN’T ABOUT STANDING STILL AND BECOMING SAFE. IF ANYBODY WANTS TO KEEP CREATING THEY HAVE TO BE ABOUT CHANGE.
—Miles Davis
When Curtis Jackson first started hustling in the late 1980s, it was a chaotic world that he entered. Crack cocaine had hit the streets and turned everything upside down. Now the corner hustler was unleashed. Moving to wherever there was money to be made, this new breed of drug dealer had to contend with hundreds of scheming rivals, the erratic drug addicts, the old-style gang leaders who were trying to muscle their way back into the business, and the police who swarmed over the area. It was like the Wild West out there—every man for himself, making up his own rules as he went along.
Some couldn’t stand this. They wanted structure, somebody to tell them when to get up and get to work. They didn’t last too long in this new order. Others thrived on all the anarchy and freedom. Curtis was of the latter variety.
Then one day everything changed. An old-style gangster nicknamed “the Godfather” made a play for control over the drug traffic of Southside Queens and he succeeded. He installed his son Jermaine in Curtis’s neighborhood and the son quickly laid down the law—the family was there to bring order to the business. Jermaine would be selling these purple-top capsules for a cheap price. It would be one size fits all—his capsules or nothing. Nobody could compete with his prices, and any hustler that tried to defy him would be intimidated into submission. They were now all working for Jermaine.
Curtis found this hard to accept. He did not like any kind of authority. He kept trying to get around Jermaine’s tight grip on the area by selling his own stuff on the sly, but Jermaine and his team of enforcers kept catching him. Finally they inflicted a good beating on him and he decided it would be wise to surrender—for the time being.
Jermaine liked Curtis’s independent spirit and decided to take the youth under his wing, schooling him on what he was up to. He had done some time in prison and had studied business and economics there. He was going to run the crack-cocaine business according to a model inspired by some of the more successful corporations in America. He aimed for control of the local drug business through cheap prices and a complete monopoly on traffic�
��that was the evolution of all successful enterprises, even the new ones such as Microsoft. He personally hated all the disorder on the streets—it was bad for business and made him uneasy.
One day he drove by in his red Ferrari and invited Curtis to come along for a ride. He drove to the nearby Baisley Projects, which were controlled back then by the Pharaohs, a gang that was heavily invested in the crack trade and notorious for its violent ways. Curtis watched, with growing discomfort, as Jermaine explained to its leaders his plan for the neighborhood. He couldn’t have freelancers and gangs operating on the margins of his empire; the Pharaohs would have to fall in line as well, but he’d find a way to make it profitable for them.
The man’s arrogance was increasing by the day. Perhaps he would follow this visit up with some violent act to show the Pharaohs he meant what he said, but Curtis had a real bad feeling from that afternoon. Over the next few days, he did whatever he could to avoid running into Jermaine. Sure enough, a week later Jermaine was shot in the head and killed in one of the back alleyways of the hood. Everyone knew who did it and why.
In the months to come, Curtis thought long and hard about what had happened. A part of him had identified with Jermaine. He too had great ambitions and wanted to forge some kind of empire within the hood. With all the competition on the streets, this could never be an easy task. It was natural then for someone like Jermaine to decide that the only way to create this empire was through force and the buildup of a monopoly. But such an effort was futile. Even if he had lasted longer, there were too many people operating on the fringes who resented his takeover and would have done whatever they could to sabotage him. The fiends would have grown tired of his one-size-fits-all approach; they liked variety, even if it was only in the color of the capsules. The police would have taken notice of his large operation and tried to break it up. Jermaine had been living in the past, in ideas cooked up in prison in the 1970s, the grand era of the drug lord. Time had passed him by, and in the ruthless dynamic of the hood, he paid for this with his life.