Small Smart Choices...

With a focus on my health and well being, for me, it means both physically and mentally.  I've been fascinated to learn more about how our past plays a part in our decision making as well as the influence our subconscious mind has on our actions or lack there of.

Have you ever read Success magazine?  If so, you’re familiar with the name Darren Hardy who is the publisher and founding editor of Success. (Great reading, by the way.) I recently reread his book, The Compound Effect, which I highly recommend.  What he discusses in his book correlates with everything else I’m reading from Jim Britt, to Jim Rohn, to many others.  Here’s the first paragraph of his introduction:

“This book is about success and what it really takes to earn it.  It’s time someone told it to you straight.  You've been bamboozled for too long.  There is no magic bullet, secret formula, or quick fix.  You don’t make $200,000 a year spending two hours a day on the Internet, lose 30 pounds in a week, rub 20 years off your face with a cream, fix your love life with a pill, or find lasting success with any other scheme that is too good to be true.  It would be great if you could buy your success, fame, self-esteem, good relationships, and health and well-being in a nicely clam-shelled package at the local Walmart.  But that’s not how it works.

We are constantly bombarded with increasingly sensational claims to get rich, get fit, get younger, get sexier…all overnight with little effort for only three easy payments of $39.95.  These repetitive marketing messages have distorted our sense of what it really takes to succeed.”

As Vince Poscente discusses in his Ants and the Elephant book, our conscious mind (the ant) reacts to those infomercials so we instantly buy.  How many of those purchases end up on the shelf never opened, or we don’t use the product for very long or we don’t get the results quick enough so we give up etc. etc.?  It’s also a piece of this instant gratification environment we seem to live in today.   Meanwhile, our subconscious mind (the elephant) is reminding us that those diets work for everyone else, only the rich can make money, the wrinkle cream works for everyone else just not me etc.

So what exactly is the Compound Effect and why should I care?  The definition is “it’s the principle of reaping huge rewards from a series of small, smart choices…..These small changes offer little or no immediate results, no big win, no obvious I-told-you-so payoff.  So why bother?  Most people get tripped up by the simplicity of the Compound Effect.  For example, they quit after a couple weeks in the gym because they’re still overweight.  Or they stop practicing the piano after six months because they haven’t mastered anything other than ‘Chopsticks.’  Or they stop making contributions to their IRA after a few years because they need the cash – it’s not adding up to much anyway. What they don’t realize is that these small, seemingly insignificant steps completed consistently over time will create a radical difference.”

Small smart choices + Consistency + Time = Radical Difference