How To Avoid Missed Financial Opportunities

Opportunities help conduct energy. Stay financially flexible, accumulate, and leverage resources.

In late 2022, DNA Behavior released its ground-breaking whitepaper, Mastering Your Money Energy. Inside our research, we revealed a formula to help others discover their Money Energy potential and a critical component of that equation is the exponential impact of opportunities. And since its publication, I am often asked, “How can one discover more prospects and why does an individual or organization miss so many advantageous occasions when they present themselves?”

Preparing for opportunities means that you are consistently in a state of readiness to see and seize opportunities when they present themselves. Remember, prepare is an action word. Opportunity comes from the Latin phrase, ob portum veniens, which means "coming toward a port." It refers to a favorable wind blowing ships into the harbor. Think of an opportunity as something a good wind blew your way.

Riding the Opportunities Wind Current

The greater the wind of opportunities that present themselves, the greater the potential money energy that can be unleashed—but that depends on your mindset. So, it depends on your confidence, your self-empowerment, and ability to pursue or invest in an opportunity.

Ask yourself two pivotal questions relating to two influential concepts:

1. How would you rate yourself and your current financial flexibility to be able to create opportunities in your life? This includes:

  • Surplus assets and income that provide the capability to make life and financial decisions on your terms
  • Margin of safety for being able to deal with unexpected events
  • Secure long-term earning streams
  • A structured debt management approach
  • An opportunities fund (Think “emergency” fund but for opportunities, not to protect from the unexpected.)

2. Do you have the human capital, which are the skills, knowledge, experience, and behaviors to create or seize opportunities?  Things to consider:

  • Identity clarity – know your talents and capabilities; they can earn income and create wealth and increase your Money Energy
  • Clarity of purpose with your money improves your relationship with it
  • Continuous investment in your financial education
  • Development of multiple career paths
  • Know your communication behavior style to help build networking relationships

These are the primary considerations, and they may appear at first glance as fundamental, but your confidence, experience, and expertise in terms of financial flexibility and human capital drive exponential opportunities.

Take the Opportunities Quiz

Within the whitepaper mentioned earlier, we outlined twenty-six questions relating to your readiness state to create or seize opportunities that can create exponential stored money energy. I’ve listed them again below in a table format. Please keep in mind that there are no right or wrong answers, but the responses may cause you to stop and ask important questions about your state of preparation to generate wealth. 

Use a 1 to 7 rating for each question in the context of your current life and finances.

1 - Not at all

2 - Hardly at all

3 - To a small extent

4 - Average

5 - To a moderate extent

6 - For the most part

7 - To a very great extent

No. Opportunities Question Rating 1-7
1 Positive Surplus Cashflow - Are your earnings secure enough to pay for your immediate living needs and some of your wants?  
2 Margin of Safety – Do you have cash representing 6 to 12 months of living expenses put away in a reserve fund?  
3 Secure Long-Term Earnings Stream – Do you have any long-term guaranteed revenue streams from investments and contracts?  
4 Debt Management – Do you have a structured debt management program in place with automatic payments such that your life could not be spun out of control by liabilities?  
5 Capital Pool – Do you have the financial capacity to pay for your long-term needs beyond 12 months and achieve some of your long-term lifetime wants?  
6 Opportunities Fund – Do you have funds set aside to make investments at short notice when opportunities arise?  
7 Retirement Fund – Is your retirement planning on track to meet your goals and are you fully capitalizing on the opportunities to make contributions to your retirement fund?  
8 Diversification – Do you have diversification of your asset classes and potential income streams such that a loss does not impact more than 10% of your overall wealth?  
9 Antifragile – Do you have a counter cyclical wealth creation strategy in place?  
10 Known Windfalls – Will you likely receive an inheritance or windfall in the next 10 years which will increase your overall financial freedom, and you have the capability to manage it?  
11 Insurance Protection – Have you protected your life against unexpected events to not have a major financial exposure?  
12 Long-term Financial Commitment Coverage – Have you got a plan to meet longer term liabilities arising because of commitments you have made or that have been forced on you?  
13 Written Goals-based Financial Plan – Do you have a written financial plan (including a budget or spending plan) and a set of daily and weekly tactics to achieve your goals?  
14 Identity Clarity – Are you ready to propel your life forward and accelerate your money energy by living up to your desired identity?  
15 Money Purpose Clarity – Have you worked through how money is integrated into your life and where you wish the money to flow?  
16 College Education – Have you completed a relevant college degree course that can enhance your career opportunities?  
17 Multiple Career Path Opportunities - Do you have three or more ways you could earn immediate cashflow to pay your bills?  
18 Risk Tolerance Awareness – Have you developed your own risk/reward framework for assessing risk in the context of who you are and your financial capacity?  
19 Financial Education – Do you believe you have sufficient financial capability to understand the key decisions you may be required to make?  
20 Greed Management – Have you determined how much is enough for you and to what extent you will push to make more with the potential risk to your happiness and health?  
21 Continuous Life Learning – Are you regularly taking advantage of education opportunities to be a continuous learner?  
22 Relationship Capital – Have you nurtured the key relationships in your life and established a wide variety of networks to bring in the right opportunities?  
23 Contributing Beyond Yourself – Are you actively adopting a pay it forward strategy in some way?  
24 Personal Life Energy Management – Have you developed and regularly follow personal life energy management practices that build your personal clarity and reduce stress through greater alignment to your identity, heart, and soul?  
25 Robust Health - Are you focused on ensuring you are in a robust physical and mental state that will enable you to take advantage of work or business opportunities for longer?  
26 A “You” Centered Life Support Team – Do you have a group of wise people, including a financial advisor, working in your best interest providing feedback on your decision-making for happiness, success, and health?  
  Total  


What did your responses reveal? What would you need to work on to be able to step into an opportunity without adversely impacting your quality of life or finances? The higher the score the more likelihood you will act on the opportunities that come your way.

Complete our full Money Energy Discovery to learn more about how you can leverage your natural DNA behavioral style to increase your opportunities by having an improved relationship with money.

Related: How Advisors Can Manage Behavioral Bias