The Compound Effect

by Darren Hardy

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.” Your brain is programmed to seek out the negative—dwindling resources, destructive weather, whatever’s out to hurt you.

Your 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.

Birds of a feather flock together. The people with whom you habitually associate are called your “reference group.”

Jim Rohn taught that we become the combined average of the five people we hang around the most.

If you haven’t already, jot down the names of those five people you hang around the most. Also write down their main characteristics, both positive and negative. It doesn’t matter who they are.

When you make the tough decision to put up boundaries between you and people who drag you down, realize that they’ll fight you—especially those closest to you. 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. Their resistance doesn’t mean they don’t love you or want the best for you—it’s actually not about you at all. It’s about their fear and their guilt about their own poor choices and lack of discipline. Just know that breaking away won’t be easy.

Put another way, you will get in life what you accept and expect you are worthy of.

“There is a point in every race when a rider encounters his real opponent and understands that it’s himself,”

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

More often than not, the extra effort doesn’t cost that much more money or energy.

Whenever you realize small, seemingly innocuous poor habits have crept back into your life, take out this book. Whenever you fall off the wagon of consistency, take out this book. Whenever you want to reignite your motivation and bolster your why-power, take out this book. Every time you read this book, it entices Big Mo to pay a visit to your life.

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.