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I heard of this amazing concept the other day and it has just stuck in my head since I’ve learned it so I wanted to share it with you.
So I heard this very interesting concept about what separates successful people from everyone else. Is it some magic skill or gift from birth? Nope. It actually is so simple you might not believe me. It’s called the “slight edge”.
What makes us successful is not the HUGE once in awhile things we do, but the little consistent things we do everyday. Think about it for a second, I want you to really think about this.
There is no one action you could do ONLY ONCE that would make you successful. But one small action done over and over again definitely can lead to success.
The real secret to continued success is to get in the habit of doing successful activities daily. And don’t make it big things. When we make it too big then it seems like a huge task/burden and we don’t do it.
Here’s a personal example. Awhile back I wanted to get back into great shape. And with my busy travel schedule, it’s really hard to hit the gym as consistently as I want. So I made a goal of every day doing just 10 pushups as soon as I woke up. No matter what, just 10 pushups so if I didn’t hit the gym that day at least I got something in. I mean that’s not hard to do right? Well with little extra effort I’m up to 100 pushups in the morning and to be honest with you it never really seemed hard to get to.
By just doing one simple thing everyday over time will give you the slight edge in success. To really understand the power of the slight edge, Jeff Olson broke the math down like this: If you were only to improve 3/10 of one percent a day, a very Slight Edge-and you kept that up for the next five years, here's what would happen to you:
The first year, you would improve 100 percent (you would already be twice what you are today The second, you would improve 200 percent. The third year, 400 percent. And the fourth, 800 percent. And by the end of year five-by simply improving 3/10 of one percent each day-you will have magnified your value, your skills, and the results you accomplished 1,600 percent. That's 22 times more than you are today.
So how does this apply to you? Think about what you want to obtain, in school, your professional life, relationships etc. And think about one so simple, so easy, so quick, that you wouldn’t even think it was a big deal but would move you toward some of your goals.
Some examples could be 1. Reading 10 pages of your textbook every day 2. Drinking 8 glasses of water 3. Write in your journal for 5 minutes. 4. Calling one person a day to say hi… it could be anything.
photo by Eric Setiawan
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Comments
09.03.08
There are no great successes, only a series of small things done well that add up.
I love when GenY "discovers" what us older geezers have known for a long time. Here is another discovery you may want to tuck away; quit talking about yourself so much and start listening. You may just discover other "simple gems."
09.03.08
This post is so true! I've got a lot of things I'd like to do to give myself a slight edge--and the smaller your daily goals are, the easier they are to meet each day. If you make your daily goals huge and daunting, you won't be able to keep up with them.
09.03.08
Thanks for commenting Rufus and Jennifer. Life really is about discovery everyday, and what I find most interesting is when we don't really "learn" something new but actually "remember" something we've already known :)
09.03.08
Very true! Thank you for this post. I knew this, but was lazy about not doing the little things everyday. This inspired me to start doing them again!
09.04.08
doing small steps daily to achieve any great or smalll goal.
To understand this we must also accept the belief that large break throughs can happen and do happen - just not as often as small forced successes.
we often time need to force ourselves to do something anything we feel that nothing is able of being accomplished.
by doing some success everyday the small becomes large before we know it!
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