Anyone who knows me, knows Darren Hardy is one of my mentors. I follow him mainly through his magazine Success, which by the way is the most useful stream of great interviews from the leaders of everything Success. They cover anything from health to marketing to sales to personal growth, it's pretty amazing. Basically you subscribe to the magazine that arrives monthly and every issue has a cd inside. The cd is my favorite part. Ok, back to the point.
Darren's book The Compound Effect took me from feeling like I could do anything to KNOWING I could do anything and it came down to one principal, HABITS. Basically if I began the right habits with an end goal in mind I would get there. I didn't know how long it would take exactly but I KNEW I could get anywhere I decided. After listening to that book literally 30 times through, it became burned in my brain. I would never focus on a great thing I could do in a week or a day, but what I could do great every single day for years. I applied what I learned to goals in my life like creating the Float Tent, writing The Float Tank Cure, building my chest. I didn't ask myself "how am I going to do these things" I asked myself "what habits will these goals take."
Here's what I came up with:
Creating the Float Tent - I knew I needed a weekly call with my partner William for product development. I knew I needed to use our prototype multiple times a week, I new I needed to research related product designs, I new I needed to build a following for when it came time to launch on Kickstarter, etc. Then I just GRINDED. Day in, day out. No missing a day, not missing a week, not losing focus, not dropping a piece. Every habit on most every day. DO NOT get discouraged, DO NOT question yourself, DO NOT second guess yourself. Next thing you know our Kickstarter funded 300k. The habits equaled the outcome. Now of course some habits will have to adjust, some goals will too, but the main goal didn't. That's important to realize. It may not happen exactly like you plan, but the ultimate destination should stay the same.
The Float Tank Cure (book) - For the book I knew I needed to work with someone who knows books and I found my way to Amy Anderson. I knew we would need to outline the whole book and have regular checkups with her. Once the book was outlined I scheduled Mondays and Fridays to write for 4 hours at a time. I scheduled each week by chapter, then I scheduled weeks to revise. I created a schedule of habits. You could pretty much copy paste from above at this point. GRIND BABY GRIND. I launched The Float Tank Cure this month and it's doing very well.
Building my Chest - so I have always had zero pec muscles, and I hated it. I would go to the gym, sometimes do chest, sometimes other stuff. It was not every week as I had a bunch of muscles to do, plus the gym always gets moved or kicked. Basically I couldn't apply the compound effect through the gym because I was too inconsistent. So I changed my approach and thought:
What habit could I do every single day no matter what to reach my goal?
I decided my new habit would be to do 50 push-ups every time I was waiting for the shower to warm up, and yes I shower daily.lol That was about one year ago today and I can honestly say I've missed twice. Both misses have been with my newborn son. Kids take it out of you! That's a whole other blog. lol
Ok so what happened? MY CHEST GREW! It was slow, but I kept noticing a difference. My shoulders and arms look better too. Now that it's a habit I hardly notice it and I'm sure I'll be benefiting the rest of my life. Moral of this one: change your habit until you find one you can stick with, even if it's not as impressive as the one you want. I got better results from push-ups before every shower, than I did with a regular gym session. Isn't that crazy. It seems so easy to just do push-ups every day and it worked! Now I'm thinking of all the little habits I could do daily that would be powerful over time. It's pretty amazing.
So what am I saying with this blog? If you aren't where you want to be read The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy. It's a total game changer in personal success. It changed my life, and it will yours too. It's all about the consistent good habits.