The Compound Effect

by Darren Hardy

Little, everyday decisions will either take you to the life you desire or to disaster by default.

There is no magic bullet, secret formula, or quick fix. You don’t make $200,000 a year spending two hours a day on the Internet, lose 30 pounds in a week, rub 20 years off your face with a cream, fix your love life with a pill, or find lasting success with any other scheme that is too good to be true.

I’ll win because of the positive habits I’ve developed, and because of the consistency I use in applying those habits.

If you aren’t good at something, work harder, work smarter.

The Compound Effect is the principle of reaping huge rewards from a series of small, smart choices.

Small, Smart Choices + Consistency + Time = RADICAL DIFFERENCE

Believing that the other person is wrong rather than looking inside and doing the work necessary to clean up your mess is basic Psychology 101 stuff.

The most challenging aspect of the Compound Effect is that we have to keep working away for a while, consistently and efficiently, before we can begin to see the payoff.

They failed because of their success. Or rather, because they stopped doing what made them successful to begin with. Their success clouded their perspective and they slacked off.

Promise yourself that you’re going to let go once and for all of your lottery-winner expectations because, let’s face it, you only hear stories about the one winner, not the millions of losers.

By the end of this book, or even before, I want you to know in your bones that your only path to success is through a continuum of mundane, unsexy, unexciting, and sometimes difficult daily disciplines compounded over time.

Choices are at the root of every one of your results. Each choice starts a behavior that over time becomes a habit. Choose poorly, and you just might find yourself back at the drawing board, forced to make new, often harder choices. Don’t choose at all, and you’ve made the choice to be the passive receiver of whatever comes your way.

You didn’t intend to sabotage yourself, but by not thinking about your decisions—weighing the risks and potential outcomes—you found yourself facing unintended consequences. Nobody intends to

become obese, go through bankruptcy, or get a divorce, but often (if not always) those consequences are the result of a series of small, poor choices.

You’ve allowed yourself to make a choice without thinking. And as long as you’re making choices unconsciously, you can’t consciously choose to change that ineffective behavior and turn it into productive habits. It’s time to WAKE UP and make empowering choices.

“Only when you’re willing to take 100 percent responsibility for making the relationship work will it work. Otherwise, a relationship left to chance will always be vulnerable to disaster.”

You alone are responsible for what you do, don’t do, or how you respond to what’s done to you.

If it was to be, it was up to me.

Preparation (personal growth) + Attitude (belief/mindset) + Opportunity (a good thing coming your way) + Action (doing something about it) = Luck

“It’s a funny thing; the more I practice, the luckier I get.”

You cannot see what you don’t look for, and you cannot look for what you don’t believe in.

That’s because he failed to take action on all the lucky things that happened to him.

No matter what has happened to you, take complete responsibility for it—good or bad, victory or defeat. Own it.

The first step toward change is awareness. If you want to get from where you are to where you want to be, you have to start by becoming aware of the choices that lead you away from your desired destination. Become very conscious of every choice you make today so you can begin to make smarter choices moving forward.

track every action

But tracking my progress and missteps is the one of the reasons I’ve accumulated the success I have.

The biggest difference between successful people and unsuccessful people is that successful people are willing to do what unsuccessful people are not.

All winners are trackers.

That’s because if you took a dollar and invested it at 8 percent, in twenty years, that dollar would be worth almost five. Every time you spend a buck today, it’s like taking five dollars out of your future pocket.