If you believe that small, relatively insignificant decisions will make the difference in a successful job change, you are smarter than the average bear. And, you ‘get’ intuitively what the “The Compound Effect” by Darren Hardy explains in plausible stories and steps in a book designed to teach you how become ‘successful.’
I met Darren Hardy by subscribing to Success magazine. He is the publisher and hosts the CD that comes with each monthly printed edition. He tapes interviews with some of the guest authors or subjects of articles for the month. Every two or three months, a guest congratulates Darren on his ‘brilliant book, one of the most influential books I have ever read.’
I discovered that his guests were not just making nice with the host. If you believe in personal goal-setting, and every successful professional person I know lives by goals and a plan, you’ll profit from the message. This book is a very readable self-helper, interesting stories woven into a process message of habits leading to momentum leading to influence, and attaining large goals.
I hold some reservations about the value of “success” strictly in terms of material success, though. “Be anything you like,” Thomas Merton once said, “be madmen, drunks, and bastards of every shape and form, but at all costs avoid one thing: success.”
He has a point. There is a risk that the real person gets lost in the pursuit of material success when that is your sole or primary goal. Leading a life that matters, though, can be very good for the soul, and can include a sometimes surprising degree of material success. And I must confess, Darren Hardy’s carefully crafted checklists and strategies work for me, and are good for the wallet, and good for the soul.
‘The Compound Effect’ demonstrates that smart daily choices lead to energizing habits which compound into a momentum of good things. The good habit, for example, of daily gratitude for your life, lays a foundation of receptivity to opportunity. If you choose personal growth activities, (like speaking to professional groups about interviewing techniques and hiring practices), as opposed to being a spectator in life (like watching Indians baseball games), you will find yourself to be ‘lucky’ (actually co-authoring interesting e-books!) If you build a rhythm to your life based on healthy habits, you’ll influence and achieve far more than you imagined five years ago.
One of Hardy’s more powerful perspectives is that ‘success is something you attract by who you become.’ It all starts with an answer to ‘who do I need to become?’ His warning: you can commit to and do ‘correct activities’ and still not achieve what it is you seek, if you do not first see yourself in a different light. Success is both a seeing and a doing thing; the seeing part, for Darren, comes first. Getting a clear picture of who you will be next makes that reality happen.
So what does this book have to do with realizing your great new gig? Everything! If you are planning for new work or a new job or a change in directions for your career, go get it now! ‘The Compound Effect’ by Darren Hardy!