Jeff Olson Quotes

Successful people do what unsuccessful people are not willing to do.

The truth is, what you do matters. What you do today matters. What you do every day matters. Successful people just do the things that seem to make no difference in the act of doing them and they do them over and over and over until the compound effect kicks in.

The journey starts with a single step—not with thinking about taking a step.

Successful people do whatever it takes to get the job done, whether or not they feel like it.

The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson (attrib.)

Sometimes you need to slow down to go fast.

Instead of writing down what you’re going to do (chances are you’ve been doing that your whole adult life anyway, and it doesn’t make you any better at doing them), write down at the end of the day what you did do that day.

Any time you see what looks like a breakthrough, it is always the end result of a long series of little things, done consistently over time.

There are two kinds of habits: those that serve you, and those that don’t.

People on the success curve live a life of responsibility. They take full responsibility for who they are, where they are, and everything that happens to them.

Showing up is essential. Showing up consistently is powerful. Showing up consistently with a positive outlook is even more powerful.

take care with what you think. Because what you think, multiplied by action plus time, will create what you get.

There is a natural progression to everything in life: plant, cultivate, harvest.

The difficult is what takes a little time; the impossible is what takes a little longer.

A man can fail many times, but he isn’t a failure until he begins to blame somebody else.

anything worth having is worth paying that price for.

Trying to get rid of an unwanted habit is a bit like trying not to think about an elephant (the more you try not to think about it, the more you think about it). That’s because what you focus on, grows. Which is why people who put a lot of energy into focusing on what they don’t want, by talking about it, thinking about it, complaining about it, or fretting about it, usually get precisely that unwanted thing. It’s tough to get rid of the habit you don’t want by facing it head on. The way to accomplish it is to replace the unwanted habit with another habit that you do want. And creating new and better habits, ones that empower and serve you, is something you know how to do. You do it the same way you built any habit you have: one step at a time. Baby steps. The slight edge.

I guess it comes down to a simple choice, really. You get busy living, or get busy dying.” —Andy Dufresne in The Shawshank Redemption

And some more shocking news: your ship’s not coming—it’s already here. Docked and waiting. You already have the money. You already have the time. You already have the skill, the confidence. You already have everything you need to achieve everything you want.

Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don’t give up.

Your happiness is affected by 1) your outlook, that is, how you choose to view the events and circumstances of your everyday life; 2) specific actions with positive impact—things like writing down three things your grateful for, or sending appreciative emails, doing random acts of kindness, practicing forgiveness, meditating, and exercising; and 3) where you put your time and energy, and especially investing more time into important relationships and personally meaningful pursuits.

Do the thing, and you shall have the power.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson Essay on Compensation

It’s never too late to start. It’s always too late to wait.

The predominant state of mind displayed by those people on the failure curve is blame. The predominant state of mind displayed by those people on the success curve is responsibility.

Every morning write down three new things you’re grateful for. Journal for two minutes a day about a positive experience from the past 24 hours. Meditate daily for a few minutes. At the start of every day, write an email to someone praising or thanking them. Get fifteen minutes of simple cardio exercise a day.

Show up. Show up consistently. Show up consistently with a positive outlook. Be prepared for and committed to the long haul. Cultivate a burning desire backed by faith. Be willing to pay the price. And do the things you’ve committed to doing—even when no one else is watching.

Someday Never Comes “Some day my prince will come.…” Good old Walt Disney. Well, that may have worked out for Snow White. Back here on Earth, it’s a recipe for disappointment. In flesh-and-blood life, waiting for “some day” is no strategy for success, it’s a cop-out. What’s more, it’s one that the majority follow their whole lives. Someday, when my ship comes in … Someday, when I have the money … Someday, when I have the time … Someday, when I have the skill … Someday, when I have the confidence … How many of those statements have you said to yourself? Have I got some sobering news for you: “some day” doesn’t exist, never has, and never will. There is no “some day.” There’s only today. When tomorrow comes, it will be another today; so will the next day. They all will. There is never anything but today.

In the process of learning to walk, did you spend more time falling down or standing up? If you were anything like most babies, you failed (fell) far more than you succeeded (walked). It didn’t matter: you were on the path of mastery.

I could tell you that if you would agree to read ten pages of one of these good books every single day, over time, you could not help but accumulate all the knowledge you’d ever need to be as successful as you could ever want to be. Like a penny over time, reading ten pages a day would compound, just like that, and create inside you a ten-million-dollar bank of knowledge. If you kept this up for a year, you would have read 3,650 pages—the equivalent of one or two dozen books of life-transforming material. Would your life have changed? Absolutely. No question.

The great Baseball Hall-of-Famer Tom Seaver put it perfectly: In baseball, my theory is to strive for consistency, not to worry about the numbers. If you dwell on statistics you get shortsighted; if you aim for consistency, the numbers will be there at the end.

Because time will either promote you or expose you.

The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson

Because what you need to transform your life is not more information.

Remember: success does not lead to happiness—it’s the other way around.

never doubt that a single thoughtful, committed person can change the world.

Your income tends to equal the average income of your five best friends,

it is just as easy to step back into the habit of succeeding as it is to slip into the habit of failing.

If you’ve ever been told, “You’ll get it if you just want it bad enough,” I’m here to let you off the hook: it simply isn’t true.

Things like taking a few dollars out of a paycheck, putting it into savings, and leaving it there. Or doing a few minutes of exercise every day—and not skipping it. Or reading ten pages of an inspiring, educational, life-changing book every day. Or taking a moment to tell someone how much you appreciate them, and doing that consistently, every day, for months and years. Little things that seem insignificant in the doing, yet when compounded over time yield very big results. You could call these “little virtues” or “success habits.” I call them simple daily disciplines. Simple productive actions, repeated consistently over time. That, in a nutshell, is the slight edge.

Shawn Achor’s five happy habits:   Every morning write down three new things you’re grateful for. Journal for two minutes a day about a positive experience from the past 24 hours. Meditate daily for a few minutes. At the start of every day, write an email to someone praising or thanking them. Get fifteen minutes of simple cardio exercise a day.

Everything is always in motion. Every day, every moment, your life path is either curving upward, or curving downward. Growing up we heard five times as many nos as yeses. Life has a downward pull. People on the success curve live in responsibility. People on the failure curve live in blame. People on the success curve are pulled by the future. People on the failure curve are pulled by the past. No matter where you are, at any moment you can choose to step onto the success curve.

No matter what you have done in your life up until today, no matter where you are and how far down you may have slid on the failure curve, you can start fresh, building a positive pattern of success, at any time. Including right now. But you need to have faith in the process, because you won’t see it happening at first.

A positive philosophy turns into a positive attitude, which turns into positive actions, which turns into positive results, which turns into a positive lifestyle. A positive life.

Rome ne s’est pas faite en un jour. (Rome wasn’t built in a day.)” —ancient French proverb

two critical areas of life, everyday happiness and long-term impact,

The 95 percent on the failure curve tend to accept the heroes society plants in front of them: film stars (America’s version of royalty), rock stars, sports stars.

The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.” —Chinese proverb   I

Sigmund Freud was once asked what people need in order to be able to live a full and happy life. His reply was three words: “Lieben und arbeiten.” Love and work. Work

The things that create success in the long run don’t look like they’re having any impact at all in the short run.

You are either improving or diminishing in personal and professional value.

If you don’t have money handled, you don’t live free.

You are either going for your dreams or giving up your dreams. Stretching for what you could be, or settling for what you are.

Emotions change like the wind, and you can’t stop them. No one can. They keep moving; that’s why they’re called emotions and not e-standingstills.

Each morning, write down three things you’re grateful for. Not the same three every day; find three new things to write about. That trains your brain to search your circumstances and hunt for the positive. Journal for two minutes a day about one positive experience you’ve had over the past twenty-four hours. Write down every detail you can remember; this causes your brain to literally reexperience the experience, which doubles its positive impact. Meditate daily. Nothing fancy; just stop all activity, relax, and watch your breath go in and out for two minutes. This trains your brain to focus where you want it to, and not get distracted by negativity in your environment. Do a random act of kindness over the course of each day. To make this simple, Shawn often recommends a specific act of kindness: at the start of each day, take two minutes to write an email to someone you know praising them or thanking them for something they did. Exercise for fifteen minutes daily. Simple cardio, even a brisk walk, has a powerful antidepressant impact, in many cases stronger (and more long-lasting) than an actual antidepressant!

One last thing about past and future—and I have saved the best for last. You can’t change the past. You can change the future. Would you rather be influenced by something you can’t change, or by something you can?

There are three simple, essential steps to achieving a goal: Write it down: give it a what (clear description) and a when (timeline). Look at it every day: keep it in your face; soak your subconscious in it. Start with a plan: make the plan simple. The point of the plan is not that it will get you there, but that it will get you started.

There are three simple, essential steps to achieving a goal: Write it down: give it a what (clear description) and a when (timeline). Look at it every day: keep it in your face; soak your subconscious in it. Start with a plan: make the plan simple. The point of the plan is not that it will get you there, but that it will get you started. 17.

The slight edge can carve the Grand Canyon. It can do anything. But you have to give it enough time for the power of time to kick in. The right choices and wrong choices you make at the moment will have little or no noticeable impact on how your day goes for you. Nor tomorrow, nor the next day. No applause, no cheers, no screams, no life-or-death

Everyone likes a good meal and a warm bed. Everyone wants the companionship of someone they love, and who loves them. Everyone wants to be happy in their lives. But once those basics are taken care of, we all want something more, too. One of the most compelling, universal human drives is the desire to feel that we make a difference—that because we were here, the world is a better place. Human beings are social animals, and there’s something hardwired into us that needs to know that we’ve had an impact on the world. That we matter.

Here are seven powerful, positive slight edge habits:   Show up: be the frog who jumps off the lily pad. Show up consistently: keep showing up when others fade out. Cultivate a positive outlook: see the glass as overflowing. Be committed for the long haul: remember the 10,000-hour rule. Cultivate a burning desire backed by faith: not hoping or wishing—knowing. Be willing to pay the price: sometimes you have to quit the softball team. Practice slight edge integrity: do the things you’ve committed to doing, even when no one else is watching.

So when bad things are happening to you, embrace the funk. That, too, is cultivating positive outlook. When something is hard or difficult and adversity is at your front door, embrace it, because it will make you stronger and your life richer. You can’t know happiness unless you feel sadness. If you embrace it as part of the process, it can be life-altering. Life is going to get you down and the funk is going to get you. Embrace it and fight through it and know you are not alone. Take baby steps, remember all the slight edge allies you have, and know that there is a path out of the funk.

I could show you exactly what I did to create four different, separate multimillion-dollar organizations—and teach you how to do the exact same thing. In twenty minutes. And chances are, it wouldn’t work for you. Why not? Because how to do it is not the issue. Because if we don’t fundamentally change the way you think, then you’ll have rearranged what I said by the time you leave the room. You’ll have reinvented it by the time you go to bed that night, and in the morning you won’t even recognize it as the same information. It’s the same reason diets don’t work. The same reason gym memberships don’t magically make you more fit.

Sigmund Freud was once asked what people need in order to be able to live a full and happy life. His reply was three words: “Lieben und arbeiten.” Love and work. Work is one of the most defining, overarching aspects of our lives. It molds and establishes nearly everything about our everyday existence; it is something we do practically every day and will do practically every day for most of our lives. When someone asks you, “What do you do?” what they are really asking is, “What is your work? What is your career?” Yet here is the sad irony of work in the world of the 95 percent: most people don’t love their work. A pretty good number, in fact, hate it.

That pain of wanting, the burning desire to possess what you lack, is one of the greatest allies you have. It is a force you can harness to create whatever you want in your life. When you took an honest look at your life back in the previous chapter and rated yourself as being either on the up curve or the down curve in seven different areas, you were painting a picture of where you are now. This diagram shows that as point A. Where you could be tomorrow, your vision of what’s possible for you in your life, is point B. And to the extent that there is a “wanting” gap between points A and B, there is a natural tension between those two poles. It’s like holding a magnet near a piece of iron: you can feel the pull of that magnet tugging at the iron. Wanting is exactly like that; it’s magnetic. You can palpably feel your dreams (B) tugging at your present circumstances (A). Tension is uncomfortable. That’s why it sometimes makes people uncomfortable to hear about how things could be. One of the reasons Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s famous “I have a dream” speech made such a huge impact on the world and carved such a vivid place in our cultural memory is that it made the world of August 1963 very uncomfortable. John Lennon painted his vision of a more harmonious world in the song Imagine. Within the decade, he was shot to death. Gandhi, Jesus, Socrates … our world can be harsh on people who talk about an improved reality. Visions and visionaries make people uncomfortable. These are especially dramatic examples, of course, but the same principle applies to the personal dreams and goals of people we’ve never heard of. The same principle applies to everyone, including you and me. Let’s say you have a brother, or sister, or old friend with whom you had a falling out years ago. You wish you had a better relationship, that you talked more often, that you shared more personal experiences and conversations together. Between where you are today and where you can imagine being, there is a gap. Can you feel it?

The difference between success and failure is not dramatic. In fact, the difference between success and failure is so subtle, so mundane, that most people miss it. They may not realize they have a philosophy, but they do, and it goes like this: What I do right now doesn’t really matter. It’s not hard to see how people come to this understanding of life. I don’t blame them. It’s completely understandable. It’s just not the truth. The truth is, what you do matters. What you do today matters. What you do every day matters. Successful people are those who understand that the little choices they make matter, and because of that they choose to do things that seem to make no difference at all in the act of doing them, and they do them over and over and over until the compound effect kicks in. Those little things that will make you successful in life, that will secure your health, your happiness, your fulfillment, your dreams, are simple, subtle, mundane things that nobody will see, nobody will applaud, nobody will even notice. They are those things that, at the time you do them, often feel like they make absolutely no difference. Things that are ridiculously easy to do—but just as easy not to do. Things that don’t seem to bring you any visible results—at first. Things that seem so insignificant, they couldn’t possibly matter. But they do. Things that, when you look at them as single occurrences, don’t seem like they’d have any impact at all—yet when compounded over time they add up to outrageous success.

Have you ever suddenly understood something in a “flash of recognition”? Have you ever known of someone who became an “overnight success”? Here is a great secret that holds the key to great accomplishment: both that “sudden flash” and that “overnight success” were the final, breakthrough results of a long, patient process of edge upon edge upon edge. Any time you see what looks like a breakthrough, it is always the end result of a long series of little things, done consistently over time. No success is immediate or instantaneous; no collapse is sudden or precipitous. They are both products of the slight edge. Now, I’m not saying that quantum leaps are a myth because they don’t really happen. As a matter of fact, they do happen. Just not the way people think they do. The term comes from particle physics, and here’s what it means in reality: a true quantum leap is what happens when a subatomic particle suddenly jumps to a higher level of energy. But it happens as a result of the gradual buildup of potential caused by energy being applied to that particle over time. In other words, it doesn’t “just suddenly happen.” An actual quantum leap is something that finally happens after a lengthy accumulation of slight-edge effort. Exactly the way the water hyacinth moves from day twenty-nine to day thirty. Exactly the way the frog’s certain death by drowning was “suddenly” transformed into salvation by butter. A real-life quantum leap is not Superman leaping a tall building. A real quantum leap is Edison perfecting the electric light bulb after a thousand patient efforts—and then transforming the world with it.

That’s the choice you face every day, every hour: A simple, positive action, repeated over time. A simple error in judgment, repeated over time. So easy to do. So easy not to do.

3. Growth is like interest: It compounds over time. A hustler lives from small win to small win. Tiny wins—buying things at garage sales and selling them on eBay—never compound. You might work really hard and make extra money, but it’s unlikely you’ll become a millionaire. If you follow my plan, results will stack extremely quickly. They might seem insignificant at first, but, after a year, you will have a hard-charging income stream that continues to grow for years to come. One of my favorite books is called The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson. In it, he argues that extraordinary results do not come from big wins—they come from incremental steps forward that compound over time. For instance, you don’t get fat by overeating one time; you get fat when you consistently overeat. The same is true with wealth. You don’t get rich with one big sale. You get rich by doing the right thing long enough for it to compound.

What do most people do? When there’s a tree in the way they grab that axe, dull or not, and start whaling away at it. And if they

The power of a plan is not that it will get you there. The power of a plan is that it will get you started.

by adding those little grams of success, one at a time (and by not adding more weight to the failure side), you will eventually and inevitably begin to shift the scales in your favor.

For things to change, you’ve got to change. For things to get better, you’ve got to get better. It’s easy to do. But it’s easy not to do, too.

This above all, to thine own self be true; and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.

Something is easy not to do when it won’t bankrupt you, destroy your career, ruin your relationships or wreck your health—today.

Goals are "dreams with deadlines.

little steps, compounded, do make a difference.

The difference that will make all the difference between success and failure, between achieving the quality of life you want and settling for less than you desire and deserve, lies one hundred percent in which of those little, “insignificant” actions you choose to do. This is why we are all capable of doing what it takes to be successful. We are all capable of being winners ... and yes, that includes you.

The difference between success and failure is not dramatic. In fact, the difference between success and failure is so subtle, most people miss it. They hold the philosophy that what they do doesn’t really matter. It’s not hard to see how people come to this understanding of life. I don’t blame them. It’s completely understandable. It’s just not the truth.

And that, oddly enough, is the challenge of it. This is not about making tough choices. It’s about making easy choices consistently.

There are going to be all types of obstacles placed in front of you during your lifetime. And you can determine the size of a person by the size of the problem that keeps them down. Successful people look at a problem and see opportunity.

The good news is, you’re already exceptionally well oriented toward success. The bad news is, all those ninety-five others are going to be yanking on you, sitting on you, naysaying and doomsaying on you, and doing their level best to pull you back down. Why? Because if you succeed, it reinforces that they are not where they want to be.

Are there any situations in your life today where you’ve given up and decided to keep crawling rather than go for what you really want, what you truly deserve? Have you lost the ability to make up a goal, go for it and get it? Why don’t you do what you did when you were just a year old? The answer is both simple and sad: somewhere along the way, you lost faith. You became too grown-up to take baby steps, too sure you would never succeed to let yourself fail a few times first. You gave up on the universal truth that simple little disciplines, done again and again over time, would move the biggest mountains.

Are you learning more about yourself, about the world around you, and about how life works every day? Are you learning new skills and sharpening old ones? Are you becoming a more capable person, one more interesting to know and valuable to be around? Or is your character being gradually etched with the age-lines of disappointment, disillusionment, boredom and bitterness?

Two boys. Two frogs. Two powerful choices. Riches or poverty. Life or death. You are making those same choices, every day, every hour, and the choices you make are spreading out through your life, just like the water hyacinth. You may not see the results today, or tomorrow, or even next year. In fact, by the time you do finally see the results, the process will probably be so far along that the surface of the pond will be completely covered. The question is, covered with what?

There are two prevalent types of attitudes: entitled and value-driven. A value-driven attitude says, “What can I do to help you?” An entitled attitude says, “What have you done for me lately?” An entitled attitude says, “Pay me more, and then maybe I’ll work harder.” A value-driven attitude says, “I’ll work harder, and then I expect you’ll pay me more.

Your philosophy is what you know, how you hold what you know, and how it affects what you do. You can look at anyone’s actions and trace back, through the attitudes behind those actions, to their source: the philosophy behind the attitudes. Show me what a man does, and I’ll show you what his philosophy is.

Excellent question. Because they’re all also easy not to do—and while anyone could do them, most won’t.

People on the success curve don’t ignore the past, but they use it as a tool, one of many with which they build their futures.

There are several faces of the Slight Edge I want to point out to you because they each represent a power that, once you recognize it in your life, you can harness in the pursuit of your dreams. They are momentum; completion; habit; reflection; and celebration.

I could lose it all tomorrow. (It’s happened before; I’d survive.) But there is something I cannot lose, and with that one thing I could start from scratch and build it all back up again. That one thing is the Slight Edge.

Everybody looked so tired. Failing is exhausting.

They are slight edge actions for happiness: happy habits. Each morning, write down three things you’re grateful for. Not the same three every day; find three new things to write about. That trains your brain to search your circumstances and hunt for the positive. Journal for two minutes a day about one positive experience you’ve had over the past twenty-four hours. Write down every detail you can remember; this causes your brain to literally reexperience the experience, which doubles its positive impact. Meditate daily. Nothing fancy; just stop all activity, relax, and watch your breath go in and out for two minutes. This trains your brain to focus where you want it to, and not get distracted by negativity in your environment. Do a random act of kindness over the course of each day. To make this simple, Shawn often recommends a specific act of kindness: at the start of each day, take two minutes to write an email to someone you know praising them or thanking them for something they did. Exercise for fifteen minutes daily. Simple cardio, even a brisk walk, has a powerful antidepressant impact, in many cases stronger (and more long-lasting) than an actual antidepressant! According to Shawn, if you do any one of these things faithfully for just three weeks, twenty-one days in a row, it will start to become a habit—a happy habit.

The single most important thing I can tell you about the Slight Edge is this: it’s already working, right now, either for you or against you. So don’t wait.

Over the course of his career, Abraham Lincoln had a staggering record of lost elections and public-office failures. For the ungainly lawyer from Illinois, failure was not only an option, it was practically his specialty. If it hadn’t been, he would never have made it to the White House, and who knows what the United States would look like today. Or if there would even be such a thing as the United States. And

The more success we have, the more greatness we step into and the more abundance we experience, the more responsibility we have to the world around us.

The power of a plan is not that it will get you there. The power of a plan is that it will get you started. People

happy habits.   Each morning, write down three things you’re grateful for. Not the same three every day; find three new things to write about. That trains your brain to search your circumstances and hunt for the positive. Journal for two minutes a day about one positive experience you’ve had over the past twenty-four hours. Write down every detail you can remember; this causes your brain to literally reexperience the experience, which doubles its positive impact. Meditate daily. Nothing fancy; just stop all activity, relax, and watch your breath go in and out for two minutes. This trains your brain to focus where you want it to, and not get distracted by negativity in your environment. Do a random act of kindness over the course of each day. To make this simple, Shawn often recommends a specific act of kindness: at the start of each day, take two minutes to write an email to someone you know praising them or thanking them for something they did. Exercise for fifteen minutes daily. Simple cardio, even a brisk walk, has a powerful antidepressant impact, in many cases stronger (and more long-lasting) than an actual antidepressant! According

Simple daily disciplines—little productive actions, repeated consistently over time—add up to the difference between failure and success.

Everything you do, every decision you make, is either building your dream or building someone else’s dream. Every single thing you do is either leading you away from the masses—or leading you away with the masses. Every single thing you do is a slight edge decision.

Let’s say you’re in a tough place in your life. The scales are tipped badly, the negative side tilted way down. Whether it’s your health, or your finances, or your marriage, or your career … whatever it is, you’ve reached a place where many years of simple errors in judgment have compounded over time, and you’re feeling it. You’re behind the eight ball. It sure would be nice if, somehow, you could do something dramatic. If you just wake up tomorrow and have it all turned around—snap your fingers and change it. That might happen, in a movie. But this is your life. What can you do? What happens if you add one small, simple, positive action to the success side? Nothing you can see. What happens if you add one more? Nothing you can see. What happens if you keep adding one more, and one more, and one more, and one more … Before too long, you see the scales shift, ever so slightly. And then again. And eventually, that heavy “failure” side starts to lift, and lift, and lift … and the scales start swinging your way. No matter how much negative weight from the past is on the other side, just by adding those little grams of success, one at a time (and by not adding more weight to the failure side), you will eventually and inevitably begin to shift the scales in your favor.

You see, there is no magic bullet, quick fix, or quantum leap method to reach success.

Don't try to figure out the whole race. Just figure out where to put your foot for the starting line. Just start.

You are capable of great things. Show up. Show up consistently. Show up consistently with a positive outlook. Be prepared for and committed to the long haul. Cultivate a burning desire backed by faith. Be willing to pay the price. And do the things you've committed to doing-even when you don't feel like it, even when no one else is watching.

Every day, in every moment, you get to exercise choices that will determine whether or not you will become a great person, living a great life. Greatness is not something predetermined, predestined, or carved into your fate by forces beyond your control. GREATNESS IS ALWAYS IN THE MOMENT OF THE DECISION. But you have to start.

Be happy, and the reason will appear.

As I began examining my successes and failures, what I gradually realized was that the very same activities that had rescued me from failure, that had carried me from the failure line up to the survival line, would also rescue me from average and carry me from the survival line to the success line-IF I WOULD JUST KEEP DOING THEM.

Each morning, write down three things you’re grateful for. Not the same three every day; find three new things to write about. That trains your brain to search your circumstances and hunt for the positive. Journal for two minutes a day about one positive experience you’ve had over the past twenty-four hours. Write down every detail you can remember; this causes your brain to literally reexperience the experience, which doubles its positive impact. Meditate daily. Nothing fancy; just stop all activity, relax, and watch your breath go in and out for two minutes. This trains your brain to focus where you want it to, and not get distracted by negativity in your environment. Do a random act of kindness over the course of each day. To make this simple, Shawn often recommends a specific act of kindness: at the start of each day, take two minutes to write an email to someone you know praising them or thanking them for something they did. Exercise for fifteen minutes daily. Simple cardio, even a brisk walk, has a powerful antidepressant impact, in many cases stronger (and more long-lasting) than an actual antidepressant! According

You will become as small as your controlling desire, or as great as your dominant aspiration

Like a penny over time, reading ten pages a day would compound, just like that, and create inside you a ten-million-dollar bank of knowledge.

may not sound like the most compassionate philosophy in the world, but let me tell you, there’s nothing compassionate about letting yourself get sucked into a vortex of negativity. The best thing I can do to serve the world around me is to keep myself in a state where I can best contribute—and I can’t do that if I’m being dragged down by an environment of cynicism and self-pitying complaint. I want to spend my time with people who have an infectiously positive attitude, who bring energy and vitality to the table, and who brighten the room. There may be some people with whom you’re now spending two days a week where you might decide you need to take that down to two hours. There may also be people with whom you’re spending only two minutes, where you’ll realize you need to spend far more time with them—two hours or two days. And you will find times when what you really need to do is simply disassociate yourself from someone. That’s a part of the Law of Association, too.

successful people do what unsuccessful people are not willing to do—even when it doesn’t look like it makes any difference.

Greatness is always in the moment of the decision

Luck is preparedness that eventually creates opportunity!

No success is immediate. Nor is any failure instantaneous. They are both products of the Slight Edge.

If you will commit to showing up consistently, every day, no matter what, then you have already won well more than half the battle.

Life is doing. If you aren’t doing, you’re dying.

Being productive and being busy are not necessarily the same thing. Doing things won’t create your success; doing the right things will.

Greatness is not something predetermined, predestined, or carved into your fate by forces beyond your control. Greatness is always in the moment of the decision.

I believe we are here to learn and grow, and to become so abundant in belief in ourselves that we finally tap into the full potential of the greatness that is within us and share that greatness with the world.

you’ve reached a place where many years of simple errors in judgment have compounded over time, and you’re feeling it.

our culture tends to worship the idea of the “big break.

Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success.” The

You must hold your head high and keep those fists down. No matter what anyone else says to you, don’t let ’em get your goat. Try fightin’ with your head for a change.” —Atticus Finch, in To Kill a Mockingbird by

let’s frame our definition of success as: life (health), liberty (financial freedom), and the realization of happiness.

Greatness is always in the moment of the decision.

You may get inspired by that uplifting story or inspirational pep talk, but you can’t freeze that feeling or glue the emotions of the moment into place. Emotions change like the wind, and you can’t stop them. No one can. They keep moving; that’s why they’re called emotions and not e-standingstills. You can’t dictate how you feel. No matter how much you may tell yourself to feel positive about this how-to step or that how-to step, what if you just don’t? Today, you’re excited about getting fit. You feel like doing your twenty minutes on the treadmill. Great! But what if tomorrow you just don’t feel like doing it? To find the path to success, you have to back up one more step. It’s the understanding behind the attitudes that are behind the actions.

Here’s a slight edge action guaranteed to change your life: read just ten pages of a good book, a book aimed at improving your life, every day.

short list is a summary of what’s right. The long list

Your philosophy is your view of life, something beyond feelings and attitudes. Your philosophy drives your attitudes and feelings, which drive your actions.

They do the thing, and gain the power.

I have not failed. I’ve simply discovered ten thousand ways that don’t work.

The same activities that take us from failure to survival would also take us from survival to success—if we would just keep doing them.

Write your dreams down; make them vivid and specific; give them a concrete timeline for realization;

No success is immediate, no collapse is sudden. They are both the result of the slight edge accruing momentum over time.

Hoping for “the big break”—the breakthrough, the magic bullet—is not only futile, it’s dangerous, because it keeps you from taking the actions you need to create the results you want.

Do the thing, and you shall have the power.

So easy to do. So easy not to do.

Your attitude is the thing that translates your abstract understanding (philosophy) into your concrete actions.

What all the positive psychology research and writing tells us is that you can reprogram your brain through some very simple exercises that are both simple and easy to do. Not any kind of huge, massive effort or difficult personal transformation, not some breakthrough, nothing dramatic or heroic or titanic—just simple, fairly mundane, repetitive tasks that are easy to do, and to do again, day after day. Simple tasks that, if you do them consistently and persistently over a long enough period of time, will get the results you are looking for.

Impossible just takes a little longer.

A single thoughtful, committed person can change the world. We are all having a ripple effect on others; the question is, what kind of ripple effect, negative or positive, do we want to have?

There is one quality which one must possess to win,” writes Napoleon Hill in his all-time classic Think and Grow Rich, “and that is definiteness of purpose, the knowledge of what one wants, and a burning desire to possess it.

actions,

octuple

The greatest gift you could ever give yourself is also the wisest business investment you could ever make. It is also the most critical step in accomplishing any challenging task, and is the one step without which all other success strategies, no matter how brilliant or time-tested, are doomed to fail. What is this mysterious gift? It is your own personal development. Investing in your own improvement, your own personal growth and betterment, is all these things and more.

There is one quality which one must possess to win, and that is the definiteness of purpose, the knowledge of what one wants, and a burning desire to possess it.” —Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich

A positive philosophy turns into a positive attitude, which turns into positive actions, which turns into positive results, which turns into a positive lifestyle. A positive life. And a negative philosophy turns into a negative attitude, which turns into negative actions, which turns into negative results, which turns into a negative lifestyle.

Every day, in every moment, you get to exercise choices that will determine whether or not you will become a great person, living a great life. Greatness is not something predetermined, predestined, or carved into your fate by forces beyond your control. Greatness is always in the moment of the decision.

have

The Second Himalayan Expedition, by the Scottish mountaineer W. H. Murray:        Until one is committed there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I have learned a great respect for one of Goethe’s couplets:      “Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it.      Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!

make a simple roadmap for each one, consisting of three elements: 1) your dreams for that area, expressed as goals—specific, vivid, and with a timeline; 2) a simple plan to start (and when I say simple think: “find Germans”); and 3) one simple daily discipline that you will commit to doing each and every day from now on.

With children it is often so much easier to take the path of least resistance—to let them eat that fast food they love rather than cook something healthy, to let them watch TV rather than read to them, to let them play video games rather than interact with them.

At Zappos.com, we decided a long time ago that we wanted our brand to be about the very best customer service and the very best customer experience. We believe that customer service shouldn’t be just a department, it should be the entire company … What’s the best way to build a brand? In a word: culture. Our belief is that if you have the culture right, most of the other stuff—like great customer service, or building a great long-term brand, or passionate employees and customers—will happen naturally on its own.

the author supplies you with a satisfying ending in the last ten pages. This is nonfiction, which means it’s about real life—which means the ending hasn’t been written yet. And the only one who can write it is you. So, let me ask you: How does it end?

With just 30 minutes of physical activity a day you can: Reduce health risks (high blood pressure, stroke, osteoporosis, coronary disease, type 2 diabetes, certain cancers) Keep off excess weight Ward of viral illnesses Help keep your arteries clear Strengthen your heart

I'd like to see if he'd look at some things we've found in the attic of the Olson house. Jeff suspects some of it might be valuable." When Dreams There Be

We are all either building our own dreams or building somebody else's. To put a sharper point on it, we're either building our own dreams - or building our nightmares.

I could not change my past but that I could rebuild a new future by taking just a small step every day in the right direction,

attitude—our positive outlook on life—the key factor for us living long and productive lives.

successful people do: simple things that are easy to do.

Each morning, write down three things you’re grateful for. Not the same three every day; find three new things to write about. That trains your brain to search your circumstances and hunt for the positive. Journal for two minutes a day about one positive experience you’ve had over the past twenty-four hours. Write down every detail you can remember; this causes your brain to literally reexperience the experience, which doubles its positive impact. Meditate daily. Nothing fancy; just stop all activity, relax, and watch your breath go in and out for two minutes. This trains your brain to focus where you want it to, and not get distracted by negativity in your environment. Do a random act of kindness over the course of each day. To make this simple, Shawn often recommends a specific act of kindness: at the start of each day, take two minutes to write an email to someone you know praising them or thanking them for something they did. Exercise for fifteen minutes daily. Simple cardio, even a brisk walk, has a powerful antidepressant impact, in many cases stronger (and more long-lasting) than an actual antidepressant! According to Shawn, if you do any one of these things faithfully for just three weeks, twenty-one days in a row, it will start to become a habit—a happy habit. You will have literally begun to rewire your brain to see the world in a different way, and as a result, to be happier on an everyday basis. An interesting thing is that you don’t have to do all five at once—in fact, Shawn actually recommends that you don’t even try to do that, but instead start with just one and keep repeating it until it becomes a habit, then add another, and so on.

The simple things that lead to success are all easy to do. But they're also just as easy not to do.

What happens if you add one small, simple, positive action to the success side? Nothing you can see. What happens if you add one more? Nothing you can see. What happens if you keep adding one more, and one more, and one more, and one more ... Before too long, you see the scales shift, ever so slightly. And then again. And eventually, that heavy “failure” side starts to lift, and lift, and lift ... and the scales start swinging your way. No matter how much negative weight from the past is on the other side, just by adding those little grams of success, one at a time (and by not adding more weight to the failure side), you will eventually and inevitably begin to shift the scales in your favor.

The choice the wealthy man offered his two sons is the same choice the world offers every one of us at every moment of our lives. A rich and growing circle of friends, or deepening loneliness and alienation. Vibrant and abundant vitality, or progressively declining health. Success or failure, happiness or misery, fulfillment or despair. Millionaire or beach bum. You are making that choice, every day, every hour, and the impact of those choices—for better or for worse—will spread out over the surface of your life like

Americans know they’re overweight. In fact, we spend huge amounts of money on diet books and diet programs to help us lose that burdensome extra weight. There are more than 30,000 fitness clubs in the United States, all aimed at serving the national desire to lose weight and be fit. And it’s not just a question of being a little too heavy, or of how we look. Nutrition is one of the most significant factors in society’s major killers, like heart disease, cancer, and diabetes. Most of us are literally digging our graves with our teeth. And we know all this—yet clearly the majority of us aren’t doing anything about it. Why not?

You know what you’re supposed to eat. We all do. Fresh fruits and vegetables, complex carbs, salads, whole grains, lean meats, more fish and poultry and less beef.… You know it, I know it, we all know it. So why do so many of us still go out and chow down cheeseburgers and fries every day? I’ll tell you why: because it won’t kill us. Not today.

I want the world to be better because I was here. I want my life, my work, my family to mean something. If you are not making someone else’s life better you are wasting your time. Your life will only become better by helping make other lives better.

Year after year, bill after bill, Wilberforce spent his entire career introducing an endless series of legislative proposals to his colleagues in the British Parliament in his efforts to end slavery, only to have them defeated, one after the other. From 1788 to 1806, he introduced a new anti-slavery motion and watched it fail every single year, for eighteen years in a row. Finally the water wore down the rock: three days before Wilberforce’s death in 1833, Parliament passed a bill to abolish slavery not only in England but also throughout its colonies. Three decades later, a similar bill passed in the United States, spearheaded by another man of conscience who had also spent much of his life failing, a patient Illinois lawyer named Abraham. Deus ex machina? Far from it. These weren’t solutions that dropped out of the blue sky. They were the “sudden” result of long patient years of tireless repeated effort. There was no fictional deus ex machina happening here; these were human problems, and they had human solutions. But the only access to them was through the slight edge. Of course Wilberforce and Lincoln were not the sole figures in this heroic struggle, and even after their bills were passed into law on both sides of the Atlantic, the evils of slavery and racism were far from over. Rome wasn’t rehabilitated in a day, or even a century. But their efforts—like Mother Teresa’s efforts to end poverty, Gandhi’s to end colonial oppression, or Martin Luther King’s and Nelson Mandela’s to end racism—are classic examples of what “breakthrough” looks like in the real world. All of these real-life heroes understood the slight edge. None of them were hypnotized by the allure of the “big break.” If they had been, they would never have continued taking the actions they took—and what would the world look like today?

There are two prevalent types of attitudes: entitled and value-driven. A value-driven attitude says, “What can I do to help you?” An entitled attitude says, “What have you done for me lately?” An entitled attitude says, “Pay me more, and then maybe I’ll work harder.” A value-driven attitude says, “I’ll work harder, and then I expect you’ll pay me more.” Which of these attitudes is driven by Emerson’s philosophy, “Do the thing and you’ll have the power”? Your philosophy is what you know, how you hold what you know, and how it affects what you do. You can look at anyone’s actions and trace back, through the attitudes behind those actions, to their source: the philosophy behind the attitudes. Show me what a man does, and I’ll show you his philosophy.

Why Lottery Winners Lose Your philosophy is your view of life, something beyond feelings and attitudes. Your philosophy drives your attitudes and feelings, which drive your actions. By and large, people are looking in the wrong places. They are looking for a big break, that lucky breakthrough, the amazing “quantum leap” everyone keeps talking about. I call it the philosophy of the craps table and roulette wheel, and I don’t believe they’ll ever find it. I’ve seen an awful lot of remarkable successes and colossal failures up close, and in my experience, neither one happens in quantum leaps or “breaks,” whether the lucky or unlucky kind. They happen through the slight edge.

You’ve probably heard the stories about lottery winners losing it all. They’re not urban legends; they really happen. The depths people fall to after big lottery winnings are heartbreaking and mindboggling. And it isn’t only lottery winners. You’ve also heard the stories about famous movie stars, recording stars, or star athletes who make incredible fortunes, literally hundreds of millions of dollars, and somehow manage to wind up broke and in debt. And when you heard those stories, you probably thought the same thing I did: “Man, I don’t know how they pulled that off, but if I made that kind of money I sure wouldn’t squander it all like that!” But let me ask you a tough question: are you sure about that? Speaking as one who’s made it to the top and then seen it all evaporate, all I can say is, you might be surprised. There’s a reason those lottery winners lose it all again, a reason those shining stars plummet to those dark places: they may have had the big breaks, but they didn’t grasp the slight edge. Their winnings changed their bank account balance—but it didn’t change their philosophy. The purpose of this book is to show you the slight edge philosophy, show you how it works, give you plenty of examples, and show you exactly how to make it a core part of how you see the world and how you live your life every day. Throughout this book, if you look carefully you’ll find dozens of statements that embody this philosophy, statements like “Do the thing, and you shall have the power.” Here are a few more examples that you’ll come across in the following pages: Success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal. Successful people do what unsuccessful people are not willing to do.

There’s a principle called Parkinson’s Law, after the man who coined it, Professor Cyril Northcote Parkinson. Parkinson’s Law goes like this: “Work expands to fill the time available for its completion.” Here’s how that looks when you apply it to the world of personal finances: Whatever I have, I spend. Actually, in today’s world it usually means something more like this: Whatever I have, I spend that—plus a little more. How hard is it to put aside a few dollars a day, or a little each week? Ridiculously easy. Yet most of us don’t do it. The United States has one of the highest per capita income rates in the world—and one of the lowest savings rates. Why is that?

We expect to see results, and we expect to see them now. But that’s not how success is built. Success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal. “Progressive” means success is a process, not a destination. It’s something you experience gradually, over time. Failure is just as gradual. In fact, the difference between success and failure is so subtle, you can’t even see it or recognize it during the process. And here’s how real success is built: by the time you get the feedback, the real work’s already done. When you get to the point where everyone else can see your results, tell you what good choices you’ve made, notice your good fortune, slap you on the back and tell you how lucky you are, the critical slight edge choices you made are ancient history. And chances are, at the time you actually made those choices, nobody noticed but you. And even you wouldn’t have noticed—unless you understood the power of the slight edge.

The truth is, everything is curved. There is no true straight line. Everything is always, constantly changing. Including your life. You are on a journey called your life path, and that path is not a straight line, but a curve. As you walk your path, it is always, every moment of every day, curving either upward or downward. It may seem to you that today is much like yesterday. It isn’t. It’s different. Every day is. Appearances can be deceiving; in fact, they almost always are. There may be times when things seem to be on a steady, even keel. This is an illusion: in life, there is no such thing as staying in the same place. There are no straight lines; everything curves. If you’re not increasing, you’re decreasing.

Most people hold time as their enemy. They seek to avoid the passage of time and strive to have results now. That’s a choice based on a philosophy. Successful people understand that time is their friend. In every choice I make, every course of action I take, I always have time in mind: time is my ally. That, too, is a choice based on a philosophy. Time will be your friend or your enemy; it will promote you or expose you. It depends purely upon which side of this curve you decide to ride. It’s entirely up to you. If you’re doing the simple disciplines, time will promote you. If you’re doing the few simple errors in judgment, time will expose you, no matter how well you appear to be doing right now. Life is a curved construction; time is its builder, and choice its master architect.

Another good image for the slight edge is Lady Justice, the blindfolded statue. The statue itself, of the woman holding the scales and sword to represent the idea of justice, has been around since the days of ancient Rome, but in those days it didn’t wear a blindfold. That part wasn’t added until the sixteenth century, during the renaissance in thinking that eventually gave birth to our modern ideas of representative democracy and universal human rights. The blindfold doesn’t imply that justice is “blind,” as people sometimes assume; its point is that true justice is impervious to external influence.

To find the path to success, you have to back up one more step. It’s the understanding behind the attitudes that are behind the actions. It’s the philosophy. That’s the missing ingredient, the secret ingredient. The first ingredient. Yes, you have to know the winning how-to actions, and you have to possess the winning attitudes—but what generates all that and keeps it all in place is your philosophy. Your philosophy is what you know, how you hold it, and how it affects what you do. How you think about simple, everyday things. That’s what this book is about. A positive philosophy turns into a positive attitude, which turns into positive actions, which turns into positive results, which turns into a positive lifestyle. A positive life. And a negative philosophy turns into a negative attitude, which turns into negative actions, which turns into negative results, which turns into a negative lifestyle.

The answer is as simple as it is sad: somewhere along the way, you lost faith. You became too grown-up to take baby steps, too sure you would never succeed to let yourself fail a few times first. You gave up on the universal truth that simple little disciplines, done again and again over time, would move the biggest mountains. You forgot what you used to know about the slight edge.

You’ve probably heard of the “butterfly effect.” This is a famous proposition of chaos theory, which says that when a butterfly flaps its wings in South America, it can set off a chain of events that ends up causing a typhoon in Southeast Asia. The truth is, you create your own butterfly effect, whether you know it or not, and you do it all the time. One of my favorite butterfly-effect stories is the film It’s a Wonderful Life. A small-town businessman named George Bailey reaches the edge of despair, and decides his life has no meaning and makes no difference. On the brink of suicide, he’s visited by an angel improbably named Clarence, who walks George through an experience of what the world would look like if he had never been born. (Which is exactly why we quoted a great line of Clarence’s for the epigraph of the last chapter, “The Ripple Effect.”) George gets quite an eyeful. And so would you, if you had a Clarence come along and take you on the same tour of your life. But outside Hollywood, there’s no Clarence to provide that clarity. It’s something we need to learn to see with our own eyes.

list

About having faith in the process of simple, positive actions repeated over time—the faith that miracles do happen, if you know when to trust the process and keep churning the cream.

Serving as your own boss, and doing so successfully, consistently, day in and day out, takes an uncommon degree of slight edge integrity, and frankly many business owners just don’t have it.

There are two kinds of habits: those that serve you, and those that don’t. You have choice over your habits through your choice of everyday actions. The way to erase a bad habit is to replace it with a positive habit. Here are seven powerful, positive slight edge habits:   Show up: be the frog who jumps off the lily pad. Show up consistently: keep showing up when others fade out. Cultivate a positive outlook: see the glass as overflowing. Be committed for the long haul: remember the 10,000-hour rule. Cultivate a burning desire backed by faith: not hoping or wishing—knowing. Be willing to pay the price: sometimes you have to quit the softball team. Practice slight edge integrity: do the things you’ve committed to doing, even when no one else is watching.

The power of momentum: steady wins the race. The power of completion: clear out your undones and incompletes. The power of reflection: facing the man or woman in the mirror. The power of celebration: catch yourself doing something right.

Sow an act, reap a habit. Sow a habit, reap a character. Sow a character, reap a destiny.

If "how to do it" were the answer, it'd be done. It's how you do the "hows" that's most important.

Every decision you make is a slight edge decision. What you’re going to do, how you’re going to act, what you’re going to read, who you’re going to chat with on the phone, what you’re going to eat for lunch, who you’re going to associate with. How you’re going to treat your fellow workers. What you’re going to get done today.

The first step to increasing your happiness is to understand what positive psychology research has been telling us for the past fifteen years: the most significant factors in your day-to-day, moment-to-moment level of happiness are not circumstantial. They’re not heredity. They’re not dictated by your genes or caused by outside events. The most significant factors in your happiness are your actions. What you do every day.

I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more of it I seem to have.” —Coleman Cox

Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success.” —Albert Schweitzer

Shawn teaches a set of five simple things you can do every day that, if you do them consistently over time, will make you significantly, noticeably, measurably happier. They are slight edge actions for happiness: happy habits.   Each morning, write down three things you’re grateful for. Not the same three every day; find three new things to write about. That trains your brain to search your circumstances and hunt for the positive. Journal for two minutes a day about one positive experience you’ve had over the past twenty-four hours. Write down every detail you can remember; this causes your brain to literally reexperience the experience, which doubles its positive impact. Meditate daily. Nothing fancy; just stop all activity, relax, and watch your breath go in and out for two minutes. This trains your brain to focus where you want it to, and not get distracted by negativity in your environment. Do a random act of kindness over the course of each day. To make this simple, Shawn often recommends a specific act of kindness: at the start of each day, take two minutes to write an email to someone you know praising them or thanking them for something they did. Exercise for fifteen minutes daily. Simple cardio, even a brisk walk, has a powerful antidepressant impact, in many cases stronger (and more long-lasting) than an actual antidepressant! According to Shawn, if you do any one of these things faithfully for just three weeks, twenty-one days in a row, it will start to become a habit—a happy habit. You will have literally begun to rewire your brain to see the world in a different way, and as a result, to be happier on an everyday basis.

Great success often starts from a tiny beginning—but there has to be a beginning. You have to start somewhere. You have to do something. If you add just 1 percent of anything—skill, knowledge, effort—per day, in a year it will have more than tripled. But you have to start with the 1 percent. Greatness is not something predetermined, predestined, or carved into your fate by forces beyond your control. Greatness is always in the moment of the decision.

Part of learning the slight edge is finding your own “intrinsically optimal rate of growth,” and it is always served best by a step-by-step approach of constant, never-ending improvement, which lays solid foundations and builds upon them over and over. The slight edge is your optimal rate of growth. Simple disciplines compounded over time. That’s how the tortoise won; that’s how you get to be a winner, too. Having said that, now let me ask this: what is the real point of the story of the tortoise and the hare? All together now: Slow and steady wins the race, right? But notice something here: the point is not that there’s any special virtue to moving slowly. There’s nothing inherently good about slowness, and it’s just as possible to move too slowly as to move too quickly. The key word in the Aesop moral is not “slow.” The key word here is steady. Steady wins the race. That’s the truth of it. Because steady is what taps into the power of the slight edge. The fable of the tortoise and the hare is really about the remarkable power of momentum. Newton’s second law of thermodynamics: a body at rest tends to stay at rest—and a body in motion tends to remain in motion. That’s why your activity is so important. Once you’re in motion, it’s easy to keep on keeping on. Once you stop, it’s hard to change from stop to go.

Sow an act, reap a habit. Sow a habit, reap a character. Sow a character, reap a destiny.” —Charles Reade

Attitude creates actions create results create destiny. Dan Buettner, author of Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer From the People Who’ve Lived the Longest, has traveled the world studying the everyday living habits of people who are healthiest and live the longest of anyone on the planet. Of all the factors possibly influencing health, vitality, and longevity, Buettner and his team compiled a list of nine. These people (1) live an active life, (2) cultivate purpose and a reason to wake up every morning, (3) take time to de-stress (appreciation, prayer, etc.), (4) stop eating when they are 80 percent full, (5) eat a diet emphasizing vegetables, especially beans, (6) have moderate alcohol intake (especially dark red wine), (7) play an active role in a faith-based community, (8) place a strong emphasis on family, and (9) are part of like-minded social circles with similar habits. As Buettner points out, physiological factors like exercise and diet play a role—but not as big a role as you’d expect. A big part of it is factors that have to do with attitude, habits of behavior, and who they associate with. And while we’re talking about positivity, let me clear up a common misconception about positive outlook, right here and now. Cultivating positive outlook does not mean you are always happy. It does not mean life never gets you down. It does not mean you walk around with an idiotic grin on your face even when you’re hurting, and it doesn’t mean living in denial, ignoring the realities of pain and struggle, or checking your brain at the door. People who cultivate a genuinely positive outlook go through tough times, too; when we’re cut, we bleed red blood just like everyone else.

The first step to increasing your happiness is to understand what positive psychology research has been telling us for the past fifteen years: the most significant factors in your day-to-day, moment-to-moment level of happiness are not circumstantial. They’re not heredity. They’re not dictated by your genes or caused by outside events. The most significant factors in your happiness are your actions. What you do every day. You can break down the bulk of happiness research into three areas. Your happiness is affected by 1) your outlook, that is, how you choose to view the events and circumstances of your everyday life; 2) specific actions with positive impact—things like writing down three things your grateful for, or sending appreciative emails, doing random acts of kindness, practicing forgiveness, meditating, and exercising; and 3) where you put your time and energy, and especially investing more time into important relationships and personally meaningful pursuits.

Like Edison, you are an inventor; like Fritjof Nansen, an explorer; like Emerson, a philosopher; like Steve Martin, an entertainer; like Lincoln, a statesman; like Wilberforce, a patient liberator. You are all these things and more—and the fabric of the tapestry upon which you’re assembling this story is made up of tiny threads that few will ever notice as you weave them.

That is the difference between the 5 percent and everyone else. They know how to use the slight edge to get what they want in life. No, let’s amend that slightly: they know how to use the slight edge to get what they want in life—and they do it. They do the thing, and gain the power.

Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success.

Success is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal.