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

by Jeff Olson

You’ve probably heard of the “butterfly effect.” This is a famous proposition of chaos theory, which says that when a butterfly flaps its wings in South America, it can set off a chain of events that ends up causing a typhoon in Southeast Asia. The truth is, you create your own butterfly effect, whether you know it or not, and you do it all the time. One of my favorite butterfly-effect stories is the film It’s a Wonderful Life. A small-town businessman named George Bailey reaches the edge of despair, and decides his life has no meaning and makes no difference. On the brink of suicide, he’s visited by an angel improbably named Clarence, who walks George through an experience of what the world would look like if he had never been born. (Which is exactly why we quoted a great line of Clarence’s for the epigraph of the last chapter, “The Ripple Effect.”) George gets quite an eyeful. And so would you, if you had a Clarence come along and take you on the same tour of your life. But outside Hollywood, there’s no Clarence to provide that clarity. It’s something we need to learn to see with our own eyes.