The Slight Edge: Turning Simple Disciplines into Massive Success and Happiness

by Jeff Olson

You may get inspired by that uplifting story or inspirational pep talk, but you can’t freeze that feeling or glue the emotions of the moment into place. Emotions change like the wind, and you can’t stop them. No one can. They keep moving; that’s why they’re called emotions and not e-standingstills.

It’s never too late to start. It’s always too late to wait.

There is a natural progression in life: you plant, then you cultivate, and finally you harvest.

“The highest good is like water. It gives life to the ten thousand things [that’s ancient Chinese for “everything in the universe”], yet does not compete with them. It flows in places that the mass of people detest—and therefore it is close to the Tao.”

The difficult is what takes a little time; the impossible is what takes a little longer.

until the compounded effect of all those months of steady growth began to kick in.

Made me think: The knee of the curve. Don't underestimate the later explosion of a slow build. This is how things grow.

You’re looking for the winning lottery ticket in a game that isn’t a lottery.

Over the past few decades it’s been amazing to me how many people I’ve been close to have persisted in making fun of my dietary choices, exercise habits, and personal development goals.

You’ll stop looking for the miracle, and start being the miracle.

No success is immediate, no collapse is sudden.

“Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success.” —Albert Schweitzer

In January 2005 Time magazine ran a cover story titled “The Science of Happiness.”

I need to find this article and research this and apply it and parallel principles to medical care and prophylaxis and client education

The founders of the American experiment wanted to frame a context, an environment where individuals could go about pursuing happiness, whatever that meant for them, in relative peace and freedom. They didn’t try to guarantee happiness itself, just a place where you stood a better chance of chasing it down without being clapped in irons.

Even when things were tough, even when money was tight (which was always) or when problems happened (which sure felt like always), she always seemed happy and content. What I now realized was that she didn’t just seem that way, she was that way.

perfectly: “Be happy, and the reason will appear.” I love that.

“Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success.”

It was stunning. The study had analyzed some 40,000 words in over 80 million tweets, and when the results were overlaid with a county-by-county analysis of heart attacks, it was a nearly exact correlation. What kind of language patterns were so predictive of illness? Overall, they were expressions of anger, hostility, and aggression, as well as disengagement and lack of social support, including “mad, alone, annoying, can’t, mood, bored, tired”—and a slew of words that I can’t repeat here. He next showed charts displaying the correlation of positive attitude and lower risk of heart attacks, and they were just as dramatic. The slide of words that correlated with low incidence of atherosclerotic disease included: “morning, fabulous, helpful, share, running, forward, great, interesting, lunch, discussion, seems.”

Research this

It is just as easy to look for what we did well and build on that. Life gives us numerous opportunities to grow, if we just see them for what they can mean.

Every morning write down three new things you’re grateful for. Journal for two minutes a day about a positive experience from the past 24 hours. Meditate daily for a few minutes. At the start of every day, write an email to someone praising or thanking them. Get fifteen minutes of simple cardio exercise a day.

“You don’t set out to build a wall,” as Will later explained it. “You set out to lay that first brick as perfectly as a brick can be laid. And you do that every single day … and soon you have a wall.”

In every choice I make, every course of action I take, I always have time in mind: time is my ally. That, too, is a choice based on a philosophy. Time will be your friend or your enemy; it will promote you or expose you.

Life is a curved construction; time is its builder, and choice its master architect.

Because if you succeed, it reinforces the fact that they are not where they want to be. They know instinctively that there are only two ways to make their building the highest structure in town: build an even bigger one, or tear down all the others. Since the odds are against them building the big one, and since it takes just too darn long to start seeing any results, and since they are not at all aware of the slight edge, they’re going to take the path of least resistance and go into the demolition business.

“A man can fail many times, but he isn’t a failure until he begins to blame somebody else.”

Unsuccessful people blame the slight edge for their lives not working. Successful people know that they cannot afford that luxury.

the future is a far better tool than the past. The future is your most powerful tool and your best friend. Devote some serious, focused time and effort into designing a crystal-clear picture of where you’re going.

You can’t change the past. You can change the future. Would you rather be influenced by something you can’t change, or by something you can?

This is one reason that, when you are formulating goals and creating a vision for your future, it’s important to be careful whom you share them with. It’s natural to share your enthusiasm with the people in your life, especially those you are closest to—and it’s also useful to remember that people often tend to respond by raining on your parade. When they do, it’s not out of malice or the conscious desire to blunt your excitement. More often it’s simply a form of self-defense. They’d rather not hear about the vision you have, because it reminds them of the one they’ve lost.

There are two ways to close the gap between where you are and where you want to be: 1) you can let go of where you are and be drawn to your goal, or 2) you can let go of your goal, hit the snooze button, and stay where you are.

If this machine, at the time one of the most sophisticated, expensive, and finely calibrated pieces of technology ever devised, was correcting its own off-course errors twenty-nine minutes out of every thirty, is it reasonable to expect that you could do better than that? Let’s say you were able to match an Apollo rocket’s degree of accuracy in the pursuit of your own goals: that would mean you’d be perfectly on target and on course no more than ten days in any given year. The next time you’re giving yourself a hard time because you feel like you’ve gotten off track, think about the Apollo program, and give yourself a break.

In other words, in the same way you take a walk and end up at home without even thinking about it, that’s how most people end up in the life they’re living at age thirty, or fifty, or seventy. “How did I get here?!” On automatic pilot. What determines where you end up?

Most of your life—99.99 percent—is made up of things you do an automatic pilot. Which means it’s essential that you take charge of your automatic pilot’s training.

Everybody’s busy. Everyone does the actions. But were they the right actions? Were those actions productive? Did you take a step forward? These are questions most people never take the time to think about. Did you eat well, or did you eat poorly? Who did you associate with today? Did they empower you? How? In what way? Did you listen to good information today, or just zone out to the music? Did you engage in positive conversation, or did you gossip or complain? What did you read that contributed to your success today? Did you do any of the things unsuccessful people aren’t willing to do? Whose dream did you build today—yours or somebody else’s?

On the path of mastery you have four powerful allies: The power of momentum: steady wins the race. The power of completion: clear out your undones and incompletes. The power of reflection: facing the man or woman in the mirror. The power of celebration: catch yourself doing something right.

Like Edison, you are an inventor; like Fritjof Nansen, an explorer; like Emerson, a philosopher; like Steve Martin, an entertainer; like Lincoln, a statesman; like Wilberforce, a patient liberator. You are all these things and more—and the fabric of the tapestry upon which you’re assembling this story is made up of tiny threads that few will ever notice as you weave them.