“What is easy to do is also easy not to do.” This is one of my favorite Jim Rohn quotes. I also think it may be one of his most misunderstood ideas.
When I’m asked for the “secret to success” the answer I often give is very simple – do the things that others won’t… the things that they find easy not to do.
That’s exactly what I did.
Once I demanded financial freedom for myself, I found it easy to read the books necessary to put myself on the path to success. Others found it easy not to.
I found it easy to work daily at the goals that would change my life. Others found it easy not to.
I found it easy to save money and to turn my savings into investment capital that increased my net worth. Others found it easy not to.
You see, the opposite of success is not failure, it is neglect. If you are going to be successful at anything, it will result from doing the little things that are easy to do but are also easy to neglect.
So, why are the little things easy not to do?
One reason is this – the effects of bad habits are not obvious day-to-day. They build up over time. When the results of the habit are finally seen, the damage is already done, and it’s difficult to get back to where you were before the habit began. As Warren Buffett puts it, “the chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.”
When you floss your teeth, it’s something you do for just a few minutes a day that keeps your teeth clean and your gums strong. If you stop doing it, your gums will grow weaker but you probably won’t notice it right away. There’s a delayed effect.
Another reason is this – when little things are looked at by themselves, they don’t seem that important. After all, how could saving one penny make you rich?
It doesn’t sound like much, but if you started saving with just one penny and then doubled the amount every day, you would end up with $5 million within just one month. What’s interesting, is that for the first 20 days in this exercise not much happens – that one penny compounds to just over $5,000. However, in days 21 to 30 things change dramatically, as the doubling takes that $5,000 to over $5 million.
Napoleon Hill said, “A big success is made up from a great number of little circumstances each of which may seem so small and insignificant most people pass them by as not being worthy of notice.” It’s easy to ignore today what is so important for the future.
Are you a clock rewinder?
I often hear people say, “I wish I would have done things differently.”
Or “I wish I would have saved just a little money over the years.”
When someone makes these types of statements they are wishing they could rewind the clock. They are wishing they would have not neglected to do the easy things. They’re wishing they would have taken the time for success. And we’ve seen what can happen when a person is too busy to be successful.
The good news is that everything you need to change your life is easy to do.
It just takes a little discipline to start saving the money that will allow you to turn your income into investment capital.
It just takes a short drive to the library to find hundreds of books on success.
It just takes a little more time each day spent doing things that move you closer to financial freedom versus activities that don’t matter.
These simple, seemingly insignificant actions, compounded over and over will build up…and they will have a massive impact on your wealth and life.
One of the most important keys to success is to do what you know you should do, even when you don’t feel like doing it.
If you want to achieve more in your life…
If you want to grow as a person and achieve your personal best…
Then you must become a person who does the little things that are both easy to do and easy not to do. If you will commit to doing the little things necessary for success each day, your life can be transformed. Success comes from doing what needs doing every day.