This
article explores Trapportunity in more detail than more previous post which did
little more than define it. Trapportunity is a phenomenon that may not be new
to you at all if you look through your life. It has however not been easy to
indentify as it had not been labeled properly until now. Trapportunities are
traps that sell themselves as opportunities. The textbook definition is; Traps
masquerading as Opportunities. What they do is to frustrate you by taking you
off your track by luring you into the trap they really are. The result is that
you are unable to reach goals, frustration overwhelms you and you cannot
perform at your best. Sometimes they simply slow down your progress towards
your real goal. Other times they deceitfully misdirect you towards what might
seem like a better goal.
In the previous
post I made a point about the fraudster who of necessity must dress like a real
business man in order to gain the confidence of his victim. To do the opposite
is to undermine his objective. In the same manner it is necessary for a trap
like anything negative to present itself as an opportunity- it is the very
nature of the negative. It must mimic good or cease to exist. It thrives on it
and one must be first very aware of this.
Often Trapportunities
plays on the lower needs. Food, clothes, shelter, sex etc. Bodily needs very
easily frustrate us when in short supply. When a man is hungry to the worst
limit, a piece of bread that belongs to somebody else will begin to look
attractive. In most case he might eat it before remembering it did not belong
to him. This is bound to invoke undesirable consequences. Responding to the
needs of the lower kind is the easiest way to falling into a trap thinking we
have seen an opportunity. A struggling business man in possession of a great
idea but has no money to feed himself, may encounter what might seem like an
opportunity. He may give away a great idea for the immediate gratification. Years
down the line he will regret this. We saw a clear example with Jacob and Esau
in Genesis 25:29-34.
Another of such
Trapportunity presented itself after Jesus’ baptism when Satan came with the bread
temptation after a 40 day fast (Matthew
4:1-11). Now seriously when a man didn't eaten
anything for 40 days, everything looks edible. All he needed was to accept
Satan’s proposal- a device that was designed to establish the destruction of
mankind by derailing Jesus from his mission. Hungry as he was, if he had
responded to his bodily need of hunger at its extreme, the history of mankind
would have taken a different course. It needs to be said that it that it would
not have been a helpful one.
Those who
have mastered themselves enough to allow their minds to control their bodies
are therefore very often high performers as they easily survive Trapportunities
that would have either derailed them or slowed them down. This is the realm of
discipline of course— delaying one’s gratification till later. It is not
uncommon however, to find ourselves in a Trapportunity as some may be so subtle
we may not be able to detect them. Sometimes we may think we have ended up in it
by accident. The cold fact however is that, we are the most active participants
in the creation of our circumstance. When we do find ourselves in a
Trapportunity however, the technique we need to apply is a very simple one.
We must see
what we can do in order to drain the opportunity out of the trap. This is done
by first of all understanding clearly that you are in a
Trapportunity. Secondly it is necessary to clearly identify how you have arrived there—this
means identifying the trap and how it has presented itself as an opportunity.
Chances are there may be traces of an opportunity dotted around. Your next task
then will be to clearly identify what opportunities can be salvaged from the situation and developing an exit strategy
bringing the salvaged opportunity with you no matter how small. The following
is a classic example:
Once upon a
time when a good friend agreed to write for a TV reality show, he failed to
recognize the trap that was hidden therein. A 24 hour reality show meant that
he had to be at home all the time to watch the show and write his observations.
It did him a lot of damage as it stopped him from working on his own projects.
It affected his movement as he always needed to be at home. To make matters
worse, he was seriously underpaid for the work that lasted two months and in
the end it wasn’t worth the trouble.
But that’s just
one way of looking at things. On a more advance level however, a good mental exercise
initiated by myself allowed him to salvage the opportunities within the trap.
Whiles the experience was painful in many ways, his feelings changed when he begun
to understand the situation he was in, how he had created it and the reason for
which he had done it. It was easier now to manage the situation and experience
allowed me to help identify what the positives were. Soon the project was over.
He walked away with a few things; a relationship with the media organization
who hired him that he can build on in the future as he had upcoming projects of
his own, the discipline of producing a number of articles in a day no matter
what and a story I can use to demonstrate the idea to you. Not a bad deal in
the end but only if you think about it the right way.
We have
thus drained more opportunities than he initially saw in the situation and this
has only been possible because of a good dose of awareness and emotional
intelligence. When we are not emotionally intelligent enough, we allow the
frustration of a situation to cloud
our judgment and Trapportunity as a negative, feeds on negative emotions in
order to grow even bigger compounding the problem. Trapportunities
must therefore be avoided at all cost but if we should find ourselves in one (and
this will happen), we must not walk away empty handed. There is always
something to walk away with that can enhance our performance. Emotional intelligence
helps a great deal and this makes it a fair treatment for Trapportunity.
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