“Opportunities in life come by creation, not by chance.”
Paramahansa Yogananda, The Law of Success

Over the past several days, I have been thinking a lot about what it actually means to keep building when the outcome is uncertain.

Not theoretically. Personally.

After more than two decades working in technology, I am still creating, learning, networking, applying, experimenting, and trying to make sense of what comes next. Some days I feel optimistic. Other days the path looks much darker. My back has been against the wall before, but this season has forced me to reconsider something I have believed for most of my life.

Maybe perseverance is not simply about doing more.

Maybe it is about learning where to direct your energy.

Earlier this month, I sat down for breakfast with my cousin, a licensed clinical social worker who recently opened her own practice. She began telling me about the difficulty of managing treatment plans, progress notes, follow-ups, documentation, and the daily workflow of seeing clients.

I told her, “I think I can build something for that.”

That conversation became a prototype. It is still early. It may become something significant, or it may simply teach us something useful.

But the opportunity did not arrive as a job posting, funding announcement, or perfectly packaged business opportunity.

It arrived through a conversation.

That same week, I discovered the website of a leading global startup community and found myself applying to exhibit and pitch at its 2027 conference. I met with an advisor about procuring government contracts. I participated in a small-business webinar about opportunities surrounding the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. I completed another vendor registration, adding to the procurement channels I had already established.

Meanwhile, I continued refining my consulting firm’s mission around helping organizations make more deliberate decisions about AI, cloud technology, and digital infrastructure.

And in another corner of my life, I announced that I will appear as a guest artist at Los Angeles Comic Con this fall through my multimedia brand.

At first glance, these things can look scattered.

Technology consulting. AI. Government contracting. A clinical application. Writing. Science fiction. Comic Con.

But I am beginning to see the thread.

Tech. Art. Culture.

More importantly, I am beginning to understand that not every seed has to become a tree immediately.

Some things are experiments. Some are relationships. Some are preparation. Some are lessons. Some will fail. A few may eventually change everything.

The challenge is remaining open enough to recognize which is which.

Yogananda writes in The Law of Success that we should choose something constructive and feasible, refuse to dwell on failure, and concentrate our abilities and opportunities toward a clear purpose.

That resonates with something else I have been thinking about recently: attention.

The questions we repeatedly ask ourselves matter.

There is a profound difference between asking:

Why does nothing ever work for me?

and asking:

What opportunity am I being prepared to recognize?

The first question searches for evidence of defeat.

The second searches for possibility.

Neither guarantees success. Positive thinking does not eliminate economic realities, unfairness, rejection, bad timing, corporate politics, or circumstances beyond our control.

But it can influence what we notice and what we do next.

My father understood something about that.

He passed away last year. The final text message he ever sent me was on April 16, 2025.

“Keep the faith.”

Those words have stayed with me.

Keep doing the work.

Use what you have been given.

But perhaps stop trying to control exactly when the harvest arrives.

I am still learning that last part.

Grit is not frantic motion. It is not launching something new every time we become afraid. It is not pretending everything is fine.

Sometimes grit is simply refusing to surrender your purpose while you cannot yet see the outcome.

So today, ask yourself one better question:

What opportunity might already be forming in front of me?

Write it down. Sit with it. Then take one constructive step toward the answer.

Keep building.

The outcome may still be uncertain.

Your next move does not have to be.

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