the world is your oyster
idiom

- If the world is someone's oyster, they are in a position to take the opportunities that life has to offer.

(Oxford Dictionary)

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The word oyster is from the Old French "oistre," which comes from the Latin "ostrea," plural or feminine of ostreum and from the Greek ostreon (related to the Greek "ostrakon, meaning "a hard shell" and "osteon," bone).The expression the "world is your oyster" likely stems from the fact that once oysters are harvested, the pearls are relatively easy to retrieve from inside the shell. Shakespeare used the phrase in The Merry Wives of Windsor:

Falstaff: "I will not lend thee a penny."
Pistol: "Why, then, the world's mine oyster, which I with sword will open."

Shakespeare uses an oyster as a metaphor for life: The world holds the possibility of making a fortune, but it depends upon how hard one looks for and works at getting it.

It may take a lot of work and trying a lot of different things (i.e., prying open a lot of oysters) before one finally makes one's fortune (i.e., finds a pearl) but persistence pays off in the end.

Whether Shakespeare invented this proverb is unclear, but he certainly popularised it.

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SPEAKING OF OYSTERS,...

Here are some more pearls of wisdom regarding success.

"Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm." Winston Churchill

"The ones who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones that do." Anonymous

"Don't let the fear of losing be greater than the excitement of winning." Robert Kiyosaki

"I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure - It is: Try to please everybody."

"If you can dream it, you can do it." Walt Disney

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Practice OWAD into a conversation today, say something like:

"Work hard, work well - THE WORLD IS YOUR OYSTER."