6. The Compound Effect - Darren Hardy (📱)

13 Feb 2017

Rating 9.5/10

Reading Notes:

Here’s the bottom line: You already know all that you need to succeed. You don’t need to learn anything more. If all we needed was more information, everyone with an Internet connection would live in a mansion, have abs of steel, and be blissfully happy. New or more information is not what you need—a new plan of action is.

The Compound Effect is the principle of reaping huge rewards from a series of small, smart choices.

Small, Smart Choices + Consistency + Time = RADICAL DIFFERENCE

I want you to know in your bones that your only path to success is through a continuum of mundane, unsexy, unexciting, and sometimes difficult daily disciplines compounded over time. Our choices can be our best friend or our worst enemy. They can deliver us to our goals or send us orbiting into a galaxy far, far away. Think about it. Everything in your life exists because you first made a choice about something. Choices are at the root of every one of your results. Each choice starts a behavior that over time becomes a habit. Choose poorly, and you just might find yourself back at the drawing board, forced to make new, often harder choices. Don’t choose at all, and you’ve made the choice to be the passive receiver of whatever comes your way.

Your biggest challenge isn’t that you’ve intentionally been making bad choices. Heck, that would be easy to fix. Your biggest challenge is that you’ve been sleepwalking through your choices. Half the time, you’re not even aware you’re making them! Our choices are often shaped by our culture and upbringing. They can be so entwined in our routine behaviors and habits that they seem beyond our control.

Have you ever been bitten by an elephant? How about a mosquito? It’s the little things in life that will bite you.

“Only when you’re willing to take 100 percent responsibility for making the relationship work will it work.

If I always took 100 percent responsibility for everything I experienced—completely owning all of my choices and all the ways I responded to whatever happened to me—I held the power. Everything was up to me. I was responsible for everything I did, didn’t do, or how I responded to what was done to me. You alone are responsible for what you do, don’t do, or how you respond to what’s done to you.

Everyone has the opportunity to be “lucky,” because beyond having the basics of health and sustenance, luck simply comes down to a series of choices.

Preparation (personal growth) + Attitude (belief/mindset) + Opportunity (a good thing coming your way) + Action (doing something about it) = Luck

Arnold Palmer, who told SUCCESS magazine in February of 2009, “It’s a funny thing; the more I practice, the luckier I get.”

You cannot see what you don’t look for, and you cannot look for what you don’t believe in.

Jim Rohn said, “The day you graduate from childhood to adulthood is the day you take full responsibility for your life.”

We canceled her subscription to People magazine (it was time to study her own life).

Aristotle wrote, “We are what we repeatedly do.”

Merriam-Webster defines habit this way: “An acquired mode of behavior that has become nearly or completely involuntary.”

Psychological studies reveal that 95 percent of everything we feel, think, do, and achieve is a result of a learned habit! We’re born with instincts, of course, but no habits at all. We develop them over time.

You know successful people aren’t necessarily more intelligent or more talented than anyone else. But their habits take them in the direction of becoming more informed, more knowledgeable, more competent, better skilled, and better prepared.

Forget about willpower. It’s time for why-power. Your choices are only meaningful when you connect them to your desires and dreams. The wisest and most motivating choices are the ones aligned with that which you identify as your purpose, your core self, and your highest values.

The power of your why is what gets you to stick through the grueling, mundane, and laborious. All of the hows will be meaningless until your whys are powerful enough.

The access point to your why-power is through your core values, which define both who you are and what you stand for. Your core values are your internal compass, your guiding beacon, your personal GPS. They act as the filter through which you run all of life’s demands, requests, and temptations, making sure they’re leading you toward your intended destination.

Getting your core values defined and properly calibrated is one of the most important steps in redirecting your life toward your grandest vision.

A goal that is not in writing is merely a fantasy.

One thing Jim Rohn taught me is: “If you want to have more, you have to become more. Success is not something you pursue. What you pursue will elude you; it can be like trying to chase butterflies.

Success is something you attract by the person you become.”

What stands between you and your goal is your behavior.

I like to read at least ten pages of an inspirational book before going to sleep. I know the mind continues to process the last information consumed before bedtime, so I want to focus my attention on something constructive and helpful in making progress with my goals and ambitions. That’s it. All hell can break loose throughout the day, but because I control the bookends, I know I’m always going to start and finish strong.

Jim Rohn taught me that life is simply a collection of experiences; our goal should be to increase the frequency and the intensity of the good experiences.

If there’s one discipline that gives me a competitive advantage, it’s my ability to be consistent.

The person who, given enough time, will beat virtually anybody in any competition as a result of positive habits and behaviors applied consistently.

If you want your brain to perform at its peak, you’ve got to be even more vigilant about what you feed it. Are you feeding it news summaries or mind-numbing sitcoms?

Your brain is not designed to make you happy. Your brain has only one agenda in mind: survival. It is always watching for signs of “lack and attack.”

Our mind is like an empty glass; it’ll hold anything you put into it. You put in sensational news, salacious headlines, talk-show rants, and you’re pouring dirty water into your glass. If you’ve got dark, dismal, worrisome water in your glass, everything you create will be filtered through that muddy mess, because that’s what you’ll be thinking about. Garbage in, garbage out.

What is that clear water? Positive, inspirational, and supportive input and ideas. Stories of aspiration, people who, despite challenges, are overcoming obstacles and achieving great things. Strategies of success, prosperity, health, love, and joy. Ideas to create more abundance, to grow, expand, and become more. Examples and stories of what’s good, right, and possible in the world.

I can’t get over how commercials prey on our psychology, our fears, pains, needs, and weaknesses. If I walk through life thinking that I’m not enough just as I am—that I need to buy this, that, and the other thing to be okay—how can I expect to create amazing results?

I don’t watch or listen to any news and I don’t read any newspapers or news magazines. Ninety-nine percent of all news has no bearing on my personal life or my personal goals, dreams, and ambitions anyway.

Who do you spend the most time with? Who are the people you most admire? Are those two groups of people exactly the same? If not, why not? Jim Rohn taught that we become the combined average of the fi ve people we hang around the most. Rohn would say we could tell the quality of our health, attitude, and income by looking at the people around us. The people with whom we spend our time determine what conversations dominate our attention, and to which attitudes and opinions we are regularly exposed.

According to research by social psychologist Dr. David McClelland of Harvard, your “reference group” determines as much as 95 percent of your success or failure in life.

I’m constantly weeding out of my life people who refuse to grow and live positively.

There are some people you can spend three hours with, but not three days. Others you can spend three minutes with, but not three hours.

I have spent more than a thousand hours getting direct instruction from Jim, and 99 percent of that was through books and audio programs.

What’s exciting about that is, no matter where you are in your life—maybe busy at home with small children or caretaking aging parents, working long hours with people with whom you have little in common, or living out in the country far from the nearest office building—you, too, can have almost any mentor you want, if he or she has gathered their best thoughts, stories, and ideas into books, CDs, DVDs, and podcasts.

Paul J. Meyer is another man who served as a mentor to me. After spending a couple of hours with Paul, hearing about all his plans and ventures and activities, my head would spin. Just trying to make sense of all he had going on exhausted me. After time with Paul, I’d want to go take a nap! But my association with him raised my game. His walking pace was my running pace. It expanded my ideas about how big I could play and how ambitious I could be. You have to get around people like that.

When I sat down with Ken Blanchard, he explained the simplicity of engaging a mentor (SUCCESS, January 2010): “The first thing you want to remember with a mentor is that it doesn’t need to take a lot of their time.

You will be amazed how successful businesspeople are willing to be mentors to people when it’s not taking a lot of time.” John Wooden reinforces the point that others desire to be mentors (SUCCESS, September 2008): “Mentoring is your true legacy. It is the greatest inheritance you can give to others. And it should never end. It is why you get up every day. To teach and be taught.” He went on to explain that mentorship is also a two-way street. “An individual needs to be open to being mentored. It is our responsibility to be willing to allow our lives and our minds to be touched, molded, and strengthened by the people who surround us.”

It’s surprising the genius people are willing to share when you show sincere interest. Remember the adage: “Never ask advice of someone with whom you wouldn’t want to trade places.

The dream in your heart may be bigger than the environment in which you find yourself. Sometimes you have to get out of that environment to see that dream fulfilled. It’s like planting an oak sapling in a pot. Once it becomes rootbound, its growth is limited. It needs a great space to become a mighty oak. So do you.

When I talk about your environment, I’m not just referring to where you live. I’m referring to whatever surrounds you. Creating a positive environment to support your success means clearing out all the clutter in your life.

Additionally, when you’re creating an environment to support your goals, remember that you get in life what you tolerate.

If you tolerate disrespect, you will be disrespected. If you tolerate people being late and making you wait, people will show up late for you. If you tolerate being underpaid and overworked, that will continue for you. If you tolerate your body being overweight, tired, and perpetually sick, it will be.

It’s amazing how life will organize around the standards you set for yourself. Some people think they’re the victims of other people’s behavior, but in actuality, we have control over how people treat us. Protect your emotional, mental, and physical space so you can live with peace, rather than in the chaos and stress the world will hurl upon you.

As Jim Rohn would say, “Don’t wish it were easier; wish you were better.”

Robert Schuller told us in his SUCCESS feature (December 2008), “I say no idea is worthwhile if it doesn’t start with ‘Wow!’ ”

Let me share with you what motivates me. My core value in life is significance. My desire is to make a positive difference in other people’s lives.

Whatever I want in life, I’ve found that the best way to get it is to focus my energy on giving to others. If I want to boost my confidence, I look for ways to help someone else feel more confident. If I want to feel more hopeful, positive, and inspired, I try to infuse that in someone else’s day. If I want more success for myself, the fastest way to get it is to go about helping someone else obtain it.