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

by Jeff Olson

Every January in every gym across America, hundreds of thousands of people start over in a process that they will soon quit. And the only reason they’re going to quit is that they haven’t set themselves up with the right expectation. They aren’t looking for incremental progress; they’re looking for results they can feel right now. They’re looking for a breakthrough. They don’t have a whisper of a chance. Easy to do, easy not to do … and in that tiny, seemingly insignificant little choice not to do, so many people quit the effort and then go on to live out lives of quiet desperation. Believing in the “big break” is worse than simply being futile. It’s actually dangerous, because it can keep you from taking the actions you need to take to create the results you want. It can even be lethal. Think of the poor frog that gave up and let himself drown because he couldn’t see a breakthrough on the horizon. He was wrong, of course: there are miracles, even in the life of a frog. It’s just that the breakthrough didn’t come down out of the clouds; it came at the end of a series of consistent, determined, compounding-interest foot-paddlings. What’s the greatest gift you can give to an inner-city kid? An understanding of the slight edge. Because that’s not the answer he’s getting from the world around him. He believes that the only way out of his world of poverty, violence, oppression, and fear is to become a sports superstar—because that’s what we tell him. That’s the quantum leap ans...