What the everyday can teach us

Time can be your best friend or your worst enemy. When you follow through on taking small, simple, positive actions every day, success becomes more of a result than a goal. But if you ignore the power of the everyday, the everyday may become your enemy.

Surround yourself with successful people

You may have heard the saying, “Birds of a feather flock together.” They do that because they’re all heading in the same direction. Similarly, if you want growth and change, look at the people around you and ask where they’re heading. Those around you rub off on you, so if your closest connections revel in the status quo or are heading for failure, you’ll end up there too. But if they’re on the path to growth and success, that’s the journey you will enjoy.

Ask yourself this – are you comfortable where you are, doing what you’re doing and you have a good business that you don’t necessarily want to grow, simply because those around you are comfortable with stagnation too? What if you surrounded yourself with people who truly want to grow – remember I’m not talking about those who SAY they want to grow, but those who are willing to DO something about it.

People often ignore the everyday things in life because they are easy and seem insignificant – and because the results are invisible.

Only 5% of people achieve a significant number of their goals in life. So if being successful is just about doing simple things consistently, what stops the other 95% of people from following through??Simply this, the 5% understand the power of marginal gains, or small wins that compound into significant change and growth. The other 95% do not. Which are you?

It’s true that small and everyday things are very easy to do. However, it’s just as easy not to do them.?

For example, popping into one of the drive-through Starbucks on your way to or from a meeting is very easy to do – great marketing strategy from Starbucks by the way! Guilty secret… I did exactly that yesterday on the way home from a client delivery session. But not doing that and saving ￡5 is just as easy. Doing 15minutes of exercise every day is a simple decision away, but it’s also very easy to ignore because it seems easier.?

Unsuccessful people tend to choose what appears to be the easiest and superficially most attractive path through life. Eventually though, it becomes clear that they’ve selected the hardest route because every time they choose NOT to take action, deciding TO take action next time becomes harder and harder.

Everything you need to do to transform your life is easy. Aside from the fact that easy things are easily ignored, there’s another reason why most people don’t do them: they don’t appear to add up to success – at least not immediately.

For example, if I chose to save ￡5 every week rather than buy a coffee, I’ll have ￡260 by the end of the year. Not very impressive, is it. But these are the building blocks that create millionaires. The trouble is the results are so far ahead in the future that they are invisible in the present, and our increasing desire for immediate results is holding us back from what is truly easy – making marginal gains every day.

What’s your number? You may be thinking ￡260 a year isn’t worth the sacrifice of one coffee a week. How about ￡2600 or even ￡26,000. Would that make you think twice about a small win every week? My point being that you are never going to get to ￡2600 or whatever your number is, until you decide to take action and begin – see my last blog on creating lasting habits.

Think about your eating habits. We all know how to eat healthily. Yet many of us choose to eat poorly. Why? simply because the negative impact isn’t instantly apparent. We all know that an unhealthy diet is more likely to cause long term health challenges yet we still choose to pack in fast food. We’ve been conditioned into thinking fast food diet is quicker and easier, the reality is that in takes no more time to plan and prepare a healthy meal than it does to go to the takeaway. Because the consequences are so far in the future, we choose the superficially easy option.

Success is gradual, just like failure. By the time your results are visible to everyone, your choice to adopt a marginal gains philosophy is history.

Your everyday actions in life add up with the passage of time, but in the moment, they don’t really seem to matter. The difference between success and failure is so tiny that it’s very easy to miss.

Unsuccessful people may not realise it, but they are living by the belief that what they do right now doesn’t matter. But it does matter. Successful people know this and use it to secure their health, happiness, fulfilment, relationships, and future business success.

Think about this – what’s the one small thing you could do today such that everything tomorrow becomes easier and moves you closer to your goal.

?Not sure how to adopt an everyday marginal gains philosophy?

Get in touch for a chat here: https://calendly.com/markjarvis/grow-scale ?

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