The Compound Effect By Darren Hardy

My Notes

whatever your mind is thinking internally is what it will focus on and all of a sudden “see” within that 99.9 percent of remaining space.

success—balance in all the aspects of life that are important to you: business, finances, health and well-being, spirituality, family and relationships, and lifestyle.

The question we should be asking ourselves is: “Who do I need to become?”

If you want to have more, you have to become more.

Success is not something you pursue.

Success is something you attract by the person you become.

When I was single and ready to find my mate and get married, I made a long list of traits I desired in the perfect woman (for me).

I filled more than forty pages of a journal, front and back, describing her in great detail—her personality, character, key attributes, attitudes, and philosophies about life, even what kind of family she’d come from, including her culture and physical makeup, down to the texture of her hair.

I wrote in depth what our life would be like and what we’d do together.

“What kind of a man would a woman like this be looking for? Who do I need to become to be attractive to a woman of this substance?” I filled forty more pages describing all the attributes, qualities, behaviors, attitudes, and characteristics I needed to become myself.

What stands between you and your goal is your behavior.

Do you need to stop doing anything so the Compound Effect isn’t taking you into a downward spiral?

Similarly, what do you need to start doing to change your trajectory so that it’s headed in the most beneficial direction?

In other words, what habits and behaviors do you need to subtract from and add to your life?

write out your top three goals.

Now make a list of the bad habits that might be sabotaging your progress in each area.

Habits and behaviors never lie.

If there’s a discrepancy between what you say and what you do, I’m going to believe what you do every time.

add to that list all the habits you need to adopt that, practiced and compounded over time, will result in you gloriously achieving your goals.

Your habits are learned; therefore, they can be unlearned.

If you want to sail your life in a new direction, you have to first pick up the anchors of bad habits that have been weighing you down.

The key is to make your why-power so strong that it overwhelms your urges for instant gratification.

About every three months, I pick one vice and abstain for thirty days (this probably stems from my Catholic Lent upbringing).

I love proving to myself that I’m still in charge.

I, for example, have what I call a “Peak-Performance Partner" Every Friday at 11 a.m.

sharp, we have a thirty-minute call during which we trade our wins, losses, fixes, ah-has, and solicit the needed feedback and hold each other accountable.

Change is hard.

That’s why people don’t transform their bad habits, and why so many people end up unhappy and unhealthy.

What excites me about this reality, however, is that if change were easy, and everyone were doing it, it would be much more difficult for you and me to stand out and become an extraordinary success.

Ordinary is easy.

Extra-ordinary is what will separate you from the crowd.

Science shows that patterns of thoughts and actions repeated many times create what’s called a neuro-signature or a “brain groove,” or a series of interconnected neurons that carry the thought patterns of a particular habit.

Attention feeds the habit.

When we give our attention to a habit, we activate the brain groove, releasing the thoughts, desires, and actions related to that habit.

Luckily, our brains are malleable.

If we stop giving attention to the bad habits, those grooves weaken.

When we form new habits, we drive new grooves deeper with each repetition, eventually overpowering the previous ones.

Summary Action Steps Identify your three best habits—those that support your most important goal.

Identify your three bad habits that take you off course from your most important goal.

Identify three new habits you need to develop to put you on track toward your most important goal.

Making new choices based on your goals and core values 2.

Putting those choices to work through new positive behaviors 3.

Repeating those healthy actions long enough to establish new habits 4.

Building routines and rhythms into your daily disciplines 5.

Staying consistent over a long enough period of time

The key to becoming world-class in your endeavors is to build your performance around world-class routines.

It can be difficult, even futile, to predict or control what will show up in the middle of your workday.

But you can almost always control how your day starts and ends.

have what I call my calibration appointment, a recurring appointment set in my calendar, where I take fifteen minutes to calibrate my day.

This is where I brush over my top three one-year and five-year goals, my key quarterly objectives, and my top goal for the week and month.

Then, for the most important part of the calibration appointment, I review (or set) my top three MVPs (Most Valuable Priorities) for that day, asking myself, “If I only did three things today, what are the actions that will produce the greatest results in moving me closer to my big goals?”

It’s important to cash out your day’s performance.

Compared to your plan for the day, how did it go?

What do you need to carry over to tomorrow’s plan?

What else needs to be added, based on what showed up throughout the day?

What’s no longer important and needs to be scratched out?

Additionally, I like to log into my journal any new ideas, ah-has or insights I picked up throughout the day—this is how I’ve collected more than forty journals of incredible ideas, insights, and strategies.

Finally, I like to read at least ten pages of an inspirational book before going to sleep.

Nothing kills Big momentum quicker and with more certainty than a lack of consistency.

Think of it like this: If you and I flew planes from Los Angeles to Manhattan, but you took off and landed in every state in between, while I flew straight through, even if you went five hundred miles per hour in the air and I only traveled at a rate of two hundred miles per hour, I’d still beat you by a big margin.

It’s far easier and requires a lot less energy to take off once and maintain a regular speed (even if slower than most everyone else) all along the way.

When you start thinking about slacking off on your routines and rhythms, consider the massive cost of inconsistency.

It is not the loss of the single action and tiny results it creates; it is the utter collapse and loss of momentum your entire progress will suffer.

Winning the race is all about pace.

Be the tortoise.

The person who, given enough time, will beat virtually anybody in any competition as a result of positive habits and behaviors applied consistently.

That’ll put the mojo in your momentum.

And keep it there!

Build your bookend morning and evening routines.

Design a predicable and fail-safe world-class routine schedule for your life.

List three areas of life in which you are not consistent enough.

What has this inconsistency cost you in life thus far?

Make a declaration to stay steadfast in your new commitment to consistency.

On your Rhythm Register, write down a half-dozen key behaviors relevant to your new goals.

These should be behaviors you want to establish a rhythm with and eventually create momentum

Everyone is affected by three kinds of influences: input (what you feed your mind), associations (the people with whom you spend time), and environment (your surroundings).

Your brain is not designed to make you happy.

Your brain has only one agenda in mind: survival.

It is always watching for signs of “lack and attack.

” Your brain is programmed to seek out the negative—dwindling resources, destructive weather, whatever’s out to hurt you.

So when you switch on that radio on the way to work and get bombarded with all those reports about robberies, fires, attacks, the tanking economy, your brain

Your mind is like an empty glass; it’ll hold anything you put into it.

You put in sensational news, salacious headlines, talk-show rants, and you’re pouring dirty water into your glass.

If you’ve got dark, dismal, worrisome water in your glass, everything you create will be filtered through that muddy mess, because that’s what you’ll be thinking about.

Garbage in, garbage out.

if you flush it with clean, clear water under the faucet long enough, eventually you’ll end up with a glass of pure, clear water.

What is that clear water?

Positive, inspirational, and supportive input and ideas.

Stories of aspiration, people who, despite challenges, are overcoming obstacles and achieving great things.

Strategies of success, prosperity, health, love, and joy.

Ideas to create more abundance, to grow, expand, and become more.

The people with whom we spend our time determine what conversations dominate our attention, and to which attitudes and opinions we are regularly exposed.

Eventually, we start to eat what they eat, talk like they talk, read what they read, think like they think, watch what they watch, treat people how they treat them, even dress like they dress.

The funny thing is, more often than not, we are completely unaware of the similarities between us and our circle of five. Watch out!

You cannot hang out with negative people and expect to live a positive life.

So, what is the combined average income, health, or attitudes of the five people you spend most of your time with?

Does the answer frighten you?

If so, the best way to increase your potential for whatever traits you desire is to spend the majority of your time with people who already possess those traits.

You will then see the power of influence work for you, rather than against you.

There are some people you might need to break away from.

Completely.

This might not be an easy step to take, but it’s essential.

You have to make the hard choice not to let certain negative influences affect you anymore.

Determine the quality of life you want to have, and then surround yourself with the people who represent and support that vision.