The Compound Effect

Geçtiğimiz günlerde çok ama çok keyifle bir kitap okudum. Adı: The Compound Effect

Kişisel gelişim kitaplarını çok okuduğum için bazılarını daha ilk bölümlerden bana katabileceği bir şey olmadığını anlayınca eleyebiliyorum. Bu kez elime gerçekten nitelikli bir kitap geçince not alarak okumayı tercih ettim. İşte severek okuduğum bu kitaptan kendim için aldığım notlar...

Small, Smart Choices + Consistency + Time = RADICAL DIFFERENCE

Having experienced extended periods of prosperity, health, and wealth, we become complacent. We stop doing what we did to get us there. We become like the frog in the boiling water that doesn’t jump to his freedom because the warming is so incremental and insidious that he doesn’t notice he’s getting cooked!

If we want to succeed, we need to recover our grandparents’ work ethic.

I have a quick, real-time story to illustrate this nothing-fails-like success concept: A great new restaurant opened up close to my home on the beach in San Diego. In the beginning, the place was always immaculate, the hostess had a big, welcoming smile for everyone, the service was impeccable (the manager came over and assured it), and the food was sensational. Soon, people started lining up to eat there and would often wait more than an hour to be seated.

Then, unfortunately, the restaurant’s staff began to take its success for granted. The hostess became snooty, the service staff disheveled and curt, and the food quality hit-or-miss. The place was out of business within eighteen months. They failed because of their success. Or rather, because they stopped doing what made them successful to begin with. Their success clouded their perspective and they slacked off.

Only when you’re willing to take 100 percent responsibility for making the relationship work will it work. Otherwise, a relationship left to chance will always be vulnerable to disaster.

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.

While we’re on the topic, it’s my belief that the old adage we often hear—“Luck is when opportunity meets preparation”—isn’t enough. I believe there are two other critical components to “luck.”

The (Complete) Formula for Getting Lucky: Preparation (personal growth) + Attitude (belief/mindset) + Opportunity (a good thing coming your way) + Action (doing something about it) = Luck 

“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.

 The day you graduate from childhood to adulthood is the day you take full responsibility for your life. 

What’s simple to do is also simple not to do. 

A horse wins by a nose, but gets 10 times the prize money. Is the horse 10 times faster? No, just a little bit better.

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.

“I have seen business moguls achieve their ultimate goals, but still live in frustration, worry, and fear. What’s preventing these successful people from being happy? The answer is they have focused only on achievement and not fulfillment. Extraordinary accomplishment does not guarantee extraordinary joy, happiness, love, and a sense of meaning. These two skill sets feed off each other, and makes me believe that success without fulfillment is failure.”

Having to fight challenges your skills, your character, and your resolve. It forces you to assess and exercise your talents and abilities. Without a motivating fight, we can become fat and lazy; we lose our strength and purpose. 

“Top people have very clear goals. They know who they are and they know what they want. They write it down and they make plans for its accomplishment. Unsuccessful people carry their goals around in their head like marbles rattling around in a can, and we say a goal that is not in writing is merely a fantasy. And everybody has fantasies, but those fantasies are like bullets with no powder in the cartridge. People go through life shooting blanks without written goals—and that’s the starting point.”

What stands between you and your goal is your behavior.

Leadership expert John C. Maxwell said, “You will never change your life until you change something you do daily. The secret of your success is found in your daily routine.” According to research, it takes three hundred instances of positive reinforcement to turn a new habit into an unconscious practice—that’s almost a year of daily practice! 

“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge.”

Recall Newton’s First Law, also known as the Law of Inertia: Objects at rest tend to stay at rest unless acted on by an outside force. Objects in motion tend to stay in motion, unless something stops their momentum. Put another way, couch potatoes tend to stay couch potatoes. Achievers—people who get into a successful rhythm— continue busting their butts and end up achieving more and more.

Once your daily disciplines have become a routine, you want the succession of those steps to create a rhythm.

“Never ask advice of someone with whom you wouldn’t want to trade places.” 

Find the line of expectation and then exceed it.

Ideas uninvested are wasted.

Do you have the cushy income, the enviable lifestyle, and the personal freedom you expected? Do you have the vibrant health, abundant loving relationships, and the world-class skills you’d intended to have by this point in your life?” If not, why? Simple—choices. It’s time to make a new choice—choose to not let the next five years be a continuum of the last. Choose to change your life, once and for all. 

You know that success isn’t easy or overnight. You understand that when you’re committed to making moment-to-moment positive choices (despite the lack of visible or instant results), the Compound Effect will catapult you to heights that will astound you, bewilder your friends, family, and your competition. When you hold true to your why-power and stay consistent with your new behaviors and habits, momentum will carry you swiftly forward. And then, together, with that momentum and consistent, positive action, it will be impossible for the next five years to be more of the same. On the contrary, when you put the Compound Effect to work for you, you will experience a success I’m willing to bet you currently cannot imagine! It will be incredible.