The Compound Effect

by Darren Hardy

When you define your goals, you give your brain something new to look for and focus on. It’s as if you’re giving your mind a new set of eyes from which to see all the people, circumstances, conversations, resources, ideas, and creativity surrounding you.

“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.”

“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.

what habits and behaviors do you need to subtract from and add to your life?

Your habits are learned; therefore, they can be unlearned. If you want to sail your life in a new direction, you have to first pick up the anchors of bad habits that have been weighing you down.

Bad Habit Killer Worksheet here (which you can also download for free at www.TheCompoundEffect.com/free) and write down your triggers.

“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!

Any new habit has to work inside your life and lifestyle.

You’ve got to find little rewards to give yourself every month, every week, every day—even something small to acknowledge that you’ve held yourself to a new behavior.

There is a one thing that 99 percent of “failures” and “successful” folks have in common—they all hate doing the same things. The difference is successful people do them anyway. Change is hard. That’s why people don’t transform their bad habits, and why so many people end up unhappy and unhealthy.

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.

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—virtually unbeatable—even though you’re now putting out considerably less effort while receiving greater results.

When it comes down to it, your new attitudes and behaviors must be incorporated into your monthly, weekly, and daily routines to affect any real, positive change.

To reach new goals and develop new habits, it’s necessary to create new routines to support your objectives.

without the proper routines built into your schedule, the results of your life can be unruly and unnecessarily hard. Developing a routine of predictable, daily disciplines prepares you to be victorious on the battlefield of life.

A daily routine built on good habits and disciplines separates the most successful among us from everyone else. A routine is exceptionally powerful.

review (or set) my top three MVPs (Most Valuable Priorities) for that day, asking myself, “If I only did three things today, what are the actions that will produce the greatest results in moving me closer to my big goals?”

Look at your routines. If something that used to energize you has become same-old/same-old, or is no longer generating powerful results, switch it up.

even when something’s a high priority for you, if it isn’t scheduled on your calendar, it often doesn’t happen, right?

by slacking off for even a short time, you killed Mo. It’s dead. And that’s a tragedy.

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

Hopefully by now you understand exactly how important your choices are. Even those that seem insignificant, when compounded, can make an extreme impact on your life. We’ve also discussed the fact that you are 100 percent responsible for your life. You alone are responsible for the choices you make and the actions you take.

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?

Although it’s true that we can eat without thinking, it’s easier to pay attention to what we put in our bodies because food doesn’t leap into our mouths.

Your brain is not designed to make you happy. Your brain has only one agenda in mind: survival.

Left to its own devices, your mind will traffic in the negative, worrisome, and fearful all day and night.

What is influencing and directing your thoughts? The answer: whatever you’re allowing yourself to hear and see. This is the input you are feeding your brain. Period.

It’s estimated that Americans (twelve and older) spend 1,704 hours watching TV per year. That averages out to 4.7 HOURS per day. We’re spending almost 30 percent of our waking hours watching TV. Almost thirty-three hours per week—more than one whole day each week! It’s the equivalent of watching TV for two solid months out of every twelve! WOW! And people wonder why they can’t get ahead in life?

Ninety-nine percent of all news has no bearing on my personal life or my personal goals, dreams, and ambitions anyway.

The average American drives about twelve thousand miles a year. That’s three hundred hours of flushing potential right there!

by listening to instructional CDs as I drive, I gain knowledge equivalent to two semesters of an advanced college degree—every year.

The people with whom you habitually associate are called your “reference group.”

The influence your friends have over you is subtle and can be positive or negative; either way, the impact is incredibly powerful. Watch out! You cannot hang out with negative people and expect to live a positive life.

Your decision to live a more positive, goal-oriented life will be a mirror to their own poor choices. You will make them uncomfortable and they will attempt to pull you back down to their level.

Find people who care enough about you to be brutally honest with you. Ask them these questions: “How do I show up to you? What do you think my strengths are? In what areas do you think I can improve? Where do you think I sabotage myself? What’s one thing I can stop doing that would benefit me the most? What’s the one thing I should start doing?”

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

Creating a positive environment to support your success means clearing out all the clutter in your life. Not just the physical clutter that makes it hard for you to work productively and efficiently (although that’s important too!), but also the psychic clutter of whatever around you isn’t working, whatever’s broken, whatever makes you cringe.

when you’re creating an environment to support your goals, remember that you get in life what you tolerate. This is true in every area of your life—particularly within your relationships with family, friends, and colleagues. What you have decided to tolerate is also reflected in the situations and circumstances of your life right now. Put another way, you will get in life what you accept and expect you are worthy of.

Some people think they’re the victims of other people’s behavior, but in actuality, we have control over how people treat us.

It wasn’t difficult, painful, or challenging when I was just running with the herd, just keeping up, but not really getting ahead. It’s not getting to the wall that counts; it’s what you do after you hit it.

Hitting the wall isn’t an obstacle; it’s an opportunity.

When conditions are great, things are easy, there aren’t any distractions, no one is interrupting, temptations aren’t luring, and nothing is disturbing your stride; that too is when most everyone else does great. It’s not until situations are difficult, when problems come up and temptation is great, that you get to prove your worthiness for progress.

When you hit the wall in your disciplines, routines, rhythms, and consistency, realize that’s when you are separating yourself from your old self, scaling that wall, and finding your new powerful, triumphant, and victorious self.

Viewing yourself as your toughest competitor is one of the best ways to multiply your results. Go above and beyond when you hit the wall. Another way to multiply your results is pushing past what other people expect of you—doing more than “enough.”

Where in life can you do more than expected when you hit the wall? Or where can you go for “WOW”? It doesn’t take a lot more effort, but the little extra multiplies your results many times over.

what’s the little extra you can do that exceeds expectations and accelerates your results?

what’s popular is average, it’s what’s common. Common things deliver common results.

In our attention-deficit, propaganda-saturated society, sometimes doing the unexpected is required to get your voice heard. If you have a cause or ideal worthy of attention, do what it takes, even the unexpected, to make your case heard. Add a little audacity to your repertoire.