There are sim­ple, but pro­found dis­ci­plines that lead us in the direc­tion of our desires.  These are tiny small steps that over­time “com­pound” and cre­ate a rip­ple that will either reap hav­oc or suc­cess in our lives.

In his book, “The Com­pound Effect”,  Dar­ren Hardy dis­cuss­es these seem­ing­ly incon­se­quen­tial tiny steps and actions that if done every day will sure­ly take your life in a new pos­i­tive direc­tion.  The catch to the com­pound effect is that it takes time to see results and unfor­tu­nate­ly we live in an era where we want imme­di­ate grat­i­fi­ca­tion.  We want the “overnight” suc­cess.  How­ev­er, there’s no such thing.  Suc­cess takes hard work, con­sis­ten­cy and a whole lot of faith.

So what are some areas in your life where you can be con­sis­tent?  If you read for even 15 min­utes every sin­gle day, with­out fail, with­in a few years you would have read dozens of books.  But if you declare that you’re going to read for an hour each day, well that’s fan­tas­tic, but life hap­pens and there will be days (many days) when you won’t be able to read for an hour and you’ll find your­self say­ing, “Well, I don’t have the time to read today so I won’t read at all.” A year will go by and you will not have advanced much in your read­ing.  Believe me, I know this all too well and I’m an avid read­er!

But remem­ber, the com­pound effect is about tak­ing small steps con­sis­tent­ly.  Sure­ly we can all com­mit 15 min­utes of our day to read­ing some­thing that’s going to give us an edge in our careers, inspire us to push a lit­tle hard­er or just teach us how to do some­thing bet­ter.  And it does­n’t just stop there.  Read­ing qual­i­ty mate­r­i­al has a trick­le effect (assum­ing you apply the prin­ci­ples you learn).  The knowl­edge, the con­cepts and ideas learned are equiv­a­lent to a col­lege degree or much bet­ter!

“For­mal edu­ca­tion will make you a liv­ing; self-edu­ca­tion will make you a for­tune.” Jim Rohn

These small actions when per­formed con­sis­tent­ly become habits: some­thing you do auto­mat­i­cal­ly, like drink­ing water or brush­ing your teeth.  You don’t have to put ener­gy or much thought into doing it.  It’s a part of your lifestyle.  For me, I’ve been read­ing con­sis­tent­ly for years every day, so now when I read it’s no big ordeal because it’s a part of who I am (though this was­n’t always the case).  It’s a good habit that I prac­tice every day.

Anoth­er habit that has become auto­mat­ic is set­ting mon­ey aside for tax­es each pay peri­od.  I start­ed set­ting addi­tion­al with­hold­ings from each pay peri­od at the begin­ning of 2016 and it’s been great.  It’s not a huge amount, so I don’t even notice it.  But it’s some­thing that has helped me not fall behind on tax­es each year.  There’s now a sur­plus for Uncle Sam to take.

Can you think about doing this with your retire­ment plan or putting mon­ey aside for a rainy day?  It’s freaky to put aside $500 each month into our sav­ings.  Most of us don’t have that much left after pay­ing our bills and liv­ing expens­es!  But con­sid­er set­ting aside $50 per pay check; set up an auto­mat­ic pay­ment plan (you are pay­ing your­self).  I promise you will not notice the dif­fer­ence in your pay­check after a few times.  Before you know it, that small $50 dol­lar con­tri­bu­tion into your sav­ings account has com­pound­ed into a nice cush­ion for you and your fam­i­ly.

This is the love­ly thing about con­sis­ten­cy and the com­pound effect.  And you can apply it to every life domain.  I urge you all to think of areas where you can take small­er steps towards your over­all goals.

You can absolute­ly do this in every area of your life. Remem­ber, you don’t have to com­mit to a lot, as long as you take action every sin­gle day.  Con­sis­ten­cy is key.  That’s it.  It real­ly is that sim­ple.

Can you drink one less cup of cof­fee per day? Sure, you can han­dle that.  Can you give up cof­fee entire­ly?  Woah, now that may be ask­ing for a lot…but sure­ly you can drink one less cup per day.  Once you’re com­fort­able with one less cup of this addic­tive legal stim­u­lant you can try this method again.  Maybe this time you will mix half decaf, half caf­feine.  Do that for a while (con­sis­tent­ly) and then remove the caf­feine all togeth­er and now you’ve rid your­self of two cups of cof­fee per day.  That’s progress and it was­n’t so dif­fi­cult.  You can repeat this process until you have reached your goal.

I’m a cof­fee drinker.  I love wrap­ping my hands around a nice hot cup of cof­fee.  But I only drink one cup every oth­er day, some­times just a cup on the week­ends.  It’s become a treat and some­thing I look for­ward to.  I don’t have to give it up entire­ly, but I know I can scale back a lit­tle, not a lot, just enough.

“The small­est deci­sions shape our lives.  Stray off course by just two mil­lime­ters and your tra­jec­to­ry changes.”

Xoxo,

Irís