Compound your way to Success

When you’re publishing SUCCESS Magazine and have interviewed literally all the successful people of our time, then you must know a thing or two about Success. This is Daren Hardy and his book “The Compound Effect”, where he shares his unsexy secrets about a very sexy topic that everyone is interested in and that is Success.

Here’s what he says: “This book is about success and what it really takes to earn it. It’s time someone told it to you straight. There is no magic bullet, secret formula, or quick fix. What this book is about, with all the unnecessary noise, fat, and fluff removed, is what really matters. This book contains those half-dozen fundamentals, they comprise the operating system called the Compound Effect.”

There is a formula

To make it easy, Daren Hardy gives us the formula for success:

Small , smart choices + Consistency + Time = Radical Difference

This is, in essence, the Compound Effect. Small improvements, like 1% - 2%, applied consistently for long periods of time, result in huge changes in the end. These small changes don’t feel significant at the moment, offer little or immediate result and they could be pretty simple. And that’s why people don’t pay attention to them. They are simple, they are boring, they are unsexy.

The writer gives one example. There are three friends that have the same lifestyle. The first one makes no changes at all. The second one decides he needs to enjoy life a little more and gets a new big screen TV, indulges in an extra fancy drink each week while cooking some rich meals. The third one decides he’s going to take a tiny little step to improve his life and just cut out 125 calories per day and walk an extra couple thousand steps per day (< 1 mile). These changes are small, almost insignificant and unnoticeable. No big deal right?

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After 5 months nothing really happens, but after 31 months lo and behold: friend 1 is the same, friend 2 gained 30 pounds, while friend 3 lost 30 pounds… That’s 60 pounds difference ( almost 30 Kgr ) !!! And not only that, their whole lives took an upward and downward spiral. The “healthy” friend felt better and decided to walk more, read a bit and work more effectively, while the “unhealthy” friend, on the other hand, started to watch more TV and felt lethargic and his whole healthy and efficiency deteriorated.

This could be a made-up example, but it is not far from the truth. When small changes are taking place for a long time they lead to unbelievable results. And when you have small wins you are motivated to try a little bit more, to work a little bit harder and these add up. And the wins get bigger and the results are more profound. This is the magic of The Compound Effect.

The Unsexy Road to Victory

Let me say that again. Our results, our goals, our dreams they come as a continuum of mundane, unsexy, unexciting, and sometimes difficult daily disciplines compounded over time. No magic pills, no secret sauce, just do what you have to do, day in, day out, whether you like it or not, feel motivated or bored. Show up and do the work! Write another post on Steemit, edit another video, walk another mile, read another book. It not easy, but this is how you get results. It’s easier to sit on your butt and watch Game of Thrones for another time, or even watch a TED talk or a GaryVee video. But this will not get you to where you want to be and of course you can bitch and whine all that you want about everything that stands in your way to success. Guess who really stands in your way…

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Daren Hardy talks a lot about daily disciplines and mundane activities like morning rituals. I will emphasize here in the most mundane of the mundane, the most unsexy of all: tracking. Whatever you do you have to start tracking and measuring it. It’s your Steemit payouts, your followers, your word count, how many steps you take, how many calories you consume, how much debt you have etc. Why ? Because the first step to change is awareness. You have to know every detail of your behavior in order to change it. Yes , I know it’s boring, but it is necessary. It could be an excel spreadsheet, a notepad whatever and I cannot stress enough the importance of this principle. Track and you will be face to face with reality or even your own BS. And then you can make the small adjustments that will produce the great results that you desire. This is where Mr Mo comes into play.

Say hello, Mr Mo!

Did you know that the space shuttle uses more fuel during the first few minutes of its flight than it does the rest of the entire trip? It has to break free from the pull of gravity, and once it does, it can glide into orbit.
The same applies to our lives. Our old ways and your old conditioning are just like the inertia of the pull of gravity. You’ll need a lot of energy to break your inertia and get your new enterprise under way. But once you get momentum, you will be hard to stop, even though you’re now putting out considerably less effort while receiving greater results.

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Mr Mo: momentum!

• Make new choices based on your goals and core values
• Put these choices to work through new positive behaviors
• Repeat those healthy actions long enough to establish new habits
• Build routines and rhythms into your daily disciplines
• Stay consistent over a long enough period of time

The more you do, the better you become and the easier it gets. It kicks in after you have put a lot of effort and work. This is when you actually enjoy doing these mundane activities, cause they bring you results. This when it becomes effortless , flawless , natural. This is when you do more and more and more.

This is when you enter an upward spiral. The spiral of Success!

And until we all enter a spiral of success,
Be healthy , smile and Steem !

PS: Now, that you’ve reached the end of this article about Daren Hardy’s “The Compound Effect”, I suppose that you know what you could do and that is upvote, resteem and follow, because this way we can create more. Right ?

Additional Read
Success Magazine official page
Daren Hardy official page