For those of you who have hung around my blog for a bit or who know me personally, you know that I come from an athletic background. Having played ice hockey for a great portion of my youth, I am used to being active. I’m used to pushing myself beyond my limits and finding new levels of success for myself. I was never the greatest hockey player, I know that, but I definitely was dedicated to whatever I committed to, even outside of sports.
In a recent conversation, it came to my attention that athletes and non-athletes sometimes think a little bit differently. I was talking to a friend of mine who was trying to get back in the gym and had gone too far, too quickly. They’d put in too many sessions in one week, coupled with too long spent pushing their muscles to exhaustion, only to go back the next day and attempt to keep going with the same muscle group. I realized in giving her advice that there’s something I had learned early on that we often forget, myself included:
There are no overnight successes.
There is no one who can walk into a gym and spend two hours working on their core to walk out of the gym with six pack abs. There’s no one who spent all afternoon shooting free throws in the backyard only to make the NBA that night. I repeat, there’s no overnight successes.
So what makes the greatest athletes and scholars so great? It’s persistence. Consistency. Work ethic. I was introduced to something early in my college career called the Compound Effect. For those of you who don’t know, it’s actually a book that talks about this secret that most people, if they want to succeed, have to master for themselves. And this is a totally personally recommendation. It’s legit one of my favorite books on success principles so if you want to learn more, click here.
Anyway, the Compound Effect is the idea that little habits daily will add up to a compound result, whether those habits happen to be positive or negative. So, for instance, if you spend six months going to the gym consistently and eating healthy, chances are you will be healthier for it. Alternatively, if you spend six months smoking, drinking, and eating fast food, you probably won’t have six pack abs.
To those who get down about the fact that there are no overnight successes, I challenge you to think this way instead: there are daily wins. Everyday, you have the opportunity to start over, do what you set out to do, and then you begin again the next day. Consistency is everything. Have we learned nothing from the story of the tortoise and the hare? Sure, the turtle was the slower of the two, but he still finished the race. And he went at the pace that he could.
So go out there, take charge of your 2020 goals, and don’t forget that winners are made every single day, not in a short instance. Strive to be the one who spends their time building the right foundation for your goals, instead of racing to finish first. Win every single day, and you will win when it matters the most in the future.
