Three Guiding Principles for Your Life and Career - Part 2

Find the Best Source of Opportunities Long Term

Long term is the key word here.  Life is a marathon not a sprint, and we should treat it as such.  Often we pick a course of action because of the short term gain.  I have usually looked for the short route and not the best route.  In my career I have chosen the paths that had the most immediate pay-out and did not seek the ones that would provide me with the greatest long-term benefits and enjoyments.
The old Aesop fable of the grasshopper and the ant illustrates this wonderfully.  We all know the story so I won't retell it, but the grasshopper chose the short term path, which held the most enjoyment for the moment, not the path for the best opportunities long term and so was left out in the cold when summer ended and winter came.
In our careers and personal lives we need to be looking down the road at the outcomes of any action that we under take.  The short pleasures and gains many times hurt us long term.  A great example of this is with diets, over eating and eating junk food gives us short term pleasures (I am starting to rethink this logic but that is for another post) but long term damage our bodies.  I recently lost 30lbs, I had to stick to a strict diet and had to give up many foods that I love which is anything fried.  But now I am reaping the rewards, I feel better and I look better.
When you are making a decision and apply this principle you should view the opportunity not only as what will bring in you the future but also will this opportunity come up again in the future.  Many times we are offered opportunities that are truly a once in a lifetime chance.  This doesn't mean that you should automatically take the opportunity but you should consider the fact that you will not have this chance again.
Use this principle to guide you daily life in a direction that you have chosen, by ignoring this principle you will make decisions that might be good for your immediate future but you will eventually find yourself in place you didn't intend nor want to be in.