Most success stories I've heard seem to talk about at least one of these concepts.
When I look back at my failures I think, If I had applied one of these ideas below that I've known for long enough now, I could have changed the way things played out. Yet despite knowing them it's hard to do them in practice.
Here are those three ideas -
I had a box of chocolates on my table and I thought I'd take one only after I finished my routine. Then my day didn't go very well so I made an excuse and finished half of them while sitting in front of my TV.
Why is delayed gratification so hard? I learnt that it's because we tend to depend highly on self control.
Instead we'd be far more successful if we deployed the most effective strategy to achieve it, explained by two of my favourite quotes, "Out of sight, out of mind" and "Environment triumphs will".
If I had just made it slightly harder to take that box and put it in a place that's hard to reach, I'd have probably forgotten about it.
"The compound effect is the principle of reaping huge rewards from a series of small, smart choices." - The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy.
We are terribly deceived by the results, that taking small steps each day towards our goals seem insignificant. But it's those insignificant steps that actually matter.
Why is applying compound effects hard? It's because it's hard for us to predict how progress yields. I remember the legend about a Chinese emperor who rewarded a peasant with one rice grain per square on a chessboard, except doubling each time. How many rice pieces would be on the 64th square? I would imagine a few million.
The answer is 18 million trillion!
Fear of failure, fear of uncertainty, fear of looking bad.. There are so many of these fears outside our comfort zone. Yet most of the rewards we seek lie exactly there.
When we desensitise ourselves to fear regularly with smaller and easier acts like standing up to our values or asking for that raise, gradually managing other fears gets easier as well.
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