You know that feeling you get in the pit of your stomach when life has taken a sudden turn in the wrong direction? In the back of your mind you think “Not again, how does this keep happening?” A little, maybe a lot, of confusion starts to stir in your mind like the fog rolling over the hills. “How on earth does this keep happening? I feel like I’m living in someone else’s story because this is not what I had planned.”
It happens to us all. And when you are very young it can happen frequently.
When it happens too much it can lead to anxiety, depression and grossly unrealistic ideas about your self-worth and abilities.
No worries. All of this can be avoided. In fact, if you make just a few changes to how you approach life you can change the trajectory of your life so that the ‘Not again’ experience becomes more rare than roasting marshmallows with Sasquatch.
When someone frequently has these “Oh no, not again” type of experiences it most often can be traced to a series of small decisions they made. No one decision caused the trouble. That’s what makes things so difficult. It’s subtle and the cause of the unpleasantness can be difficult to detect.
The good news is that if you consistently make a number of small but smart decisions, then the very opposite occurs – you find yourself almost stumbling over positive occurrences in your life.
Some people call this the ‘compound effect.’ The great writer C. S. Lewis put it this way: “Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make every day are of such infinite importance. The smallest good act today is the capture of a strategic point from which, a few months later, you may be able to go on to victories you never dreamed of. An apparently trivial indulgence in lust or anger today is the loss of a ridge or railway line or bridgehead from which the enemy may launch an attack otherwise impossible.”
If that seems a little vague let me use a different approach to show how little changes make a huge difference. Imagine someone came to you and your friend. He made the following offer to your buddy: “I am willing to give you a million dollars today, or I can give you a penny. The thing is I will double the penny every day for the next month. Now choose which you would like. Whatever you select is fine by me and your friend (that’s you) will get the other offer.”
You friend is terrific, but even so he thinks “I want that million dollars. Why would I fool around with pennies?” He takes the cool million and you get handed a penny. The man who made this offer tells you to put the penny somewhere safe. You think “This guy must be kidding me” and go back to your house and throw the penny on your bedroom desk.
The next morning you happen to notice that there are now two pennies on your desk. “Cool, clever trick, I’m rich” you say to yourself laughing.
A week goes by and you notice that the pile of pennies has grown. You now have $1.28 laying on your desk. “Almost enough to buy a Starbucks. Big deal” you mutter. Besides, you have more important things to do than look at a bunch of pennies sprawled over your desk. You need to catch a flight and getting headed off on that two week vacation you have planned.
Coming back home you head to your bedroom to unpack but upon opening the door you stop. There is money covering your desk and all over your floor. Pennies have been replaced with hundred dollar bills that total up to over $10,000.00.
Over the course of the next five days the money keeps doubling every morning and you now have over $300,000.00. Sure, it’s not the million dollars your friend snagged but it looks pretty good.
Now you can’t wait to wake up each day to see what has happened and by the end of the month you have over $5,000,000.00. Five times what you friend chose and you started with only a penny.
If you want to see how this works I’ve got the math all spelled out below.
Day 1: $.01
Day 2: $.02
Day 3: $.04
Day 4: $.08
Day 5: $.16
Day 6: $.32
Day 7: $.64
Day 8: $1.28
Day 9: $2.56
Day 10: $5.12
Day 11: $10.24
Day 12: $20.48
Day 13: $40.96
Day 14: $81.92
Day 15: $163.84
Day 16: $327.68
Day 17: $655.36
Day 18: $1,310.72
Day 19: $2,621.44
Day 20: $5,242.88
Day 21: $10,485.76
Day 22: $20,971.52
Day 23: $41,943.04
Day 24: $83,886.08
Day 25: $167,772.16
Day 26: $335,544.32
Day 27: $671,088.64
Day 28: $1,342,177.28
Day 29: $2,684,354.56
Day 30: $5,368,709.12
That’s the power of the compound effect! Keep in mind it also works in reverse. If you make small errors and continue to double down on them the negative impact on your life increases accordingly as well. Think of this as being similar to what happens when you use your credit card as personal loaning institution. It doesn’t take long before you are in a deep financial hole.
So the lesson is to focus each day on making small improvements in your life. That might involve how you use your time, the friends you choose, the effort you put into work, the choice of standing up for yourself in a positive way, not letting emotions control what you do, exercising and eating right, going to church, treating others as you want to be treated and so on.
Need something a bit more pithy in order to put all of this into practice? Then consider the guidance Joshua Wooden gave his son when he graduated from the 8th grade.
1. Be true to yourself.
2. Help others.
3. Make each day your masterpiece.
4. Drink deeply from good books, especially the Bible.
5. Make friendship a fine art.
6. Build a shelter against a rainy day.
7. Pray for guidance and count and give thanks for your blessings every day.
The boy took these lessons to heart, practiced them daily, and became the most successful and celebrated college basketball coach of all time. His name is John Wooden.
No matter what list you decide to follow, the thing to keep in mind is the need to consistently ‘double the penny’ each and every day. The rewards multiply over time in ways that you cannot imagine but ultimately result in building yourself into the very best version of you. And that makes for a rich full life.
