Mountains of Success: One Step at a Time

I’m all settled in at the airport, about to return home to Charlotte, NC after a week with my girlfriend in Salt Lake City.

Two days ago, we went out to the Timpanogos Mountains, and it was one of the most beautiful landscapes I have ever seen. As I sat there, taking in the combination of the brisk mountain air, causing my nose to sniffle, and the warm sun on my face, I couldn’t stop staring at the mountains surrounding me.

How could this have happened? How could these gigantic clumps of rock & dirt have gotten so damn big? It reminded me of a book I read called The Compound Effect, by Darren Hardy.The Compound Effect is like law of compound interest while investing. Investors know that their money consistently compounded (by a certain amount of interest), over an extended period of time, is the way to great wealth. This is true of life too.

Those mountains were created by a consistent pushing of the earth’s plates over an extended period of time, which leads to the most captivating, beautiful scenery. Yet we ignore this rule of nature in our daily lives. We eat healthy for 30-days in hopes to lose 8 inches off our waist, and when it doesn't happen, we give up. I write 3 blog posts and want 300,000 views and a book deal. We want to scratch a ticket and cash out at $62.4 mil in the state lottery. All of these “successes” ignore laws of nature and the Compound Effect. But in a world of tweets, overnight deliveries, and Keurig instant cups of coffee (which are the best), it’s difficult to stay disciplined over a long period of time. And if we're completely honest with ourselves, do we really want instant success?

Would we really want the Rocky Mountains to pop up in our front yard in the matter of seven days? Hell no.

We wouldn’t be prepared to deal with that. This is why most lottery winners lose their wealth, and why psychologists say that if all the money in the world was dispersed evenly, it would likely end up in the hands of the same 1% of people. When people receive their riches, they don’t change their “poor habits,” which causes them to end up exactly where they started.

So as I sit here frustrated that I only have 17 likes on my Facebook page, and that only 6 people read my blog post last week (Thank you to you 6 – I love you), I have to remind myself of the Compound Effect as well.

Besides, if I had 300,000,000 hits, and 30,000 internet trolls, I’d probably give up writing forever because ain't nobody got time for that.. I must lay the foundation - thick skin for the haters & my own server for that amount of traffic - before I am able to deal with such things. And that takes time.The key takeaway here is consistent effort over an extended period of time leads to mountains of success.

What is a small, consistent action you can take every single day in the direction of your goals?