Lessons from Darren Hardy: Elephants Don't Bite

Excerpt from “The Compound Effect”

Have you ever been bitten by an Elephant? How about a mosquito? It’s the little things in life that will bite you. Occasionally, we see big mistakes threaten to destroy a career or reputation in an instant – the famous comedian who rants racial slurs during a stand-up routine, the drunken anti-Semitic antics of a once-celebrated humanitarian, the anti-gay-rights senator caught soliciting gay sex in a restroom, the admired female tennis player who uncharacteristically threatens an official with a tirade of expletives. Clearly, these types of mistakes have major repercussions. But even if you’ve pulled such a whopper in your past, it’s not the extraordinary massive steps backward or the tragic single moments that we’re concerned with here.

For most of us, it’s the frequent, small, and inconsequential choices that are of grave concern. I’m taking about the decisions you think don’t make any difference at all. It’s the little things that inevitably and predictably derail your success. Whether they’re bone-headed maneuvers, no-biggie behaviors, or are disguised as positive choices ( those are especially insidious), these seemingly insignificant decisions can completely throw you off course because you’re not mindful of them. You get overwhelmed,, space out, and are unaware of the little actions that take you way off course. The Compound effect works all right. It always works, remember? But in case it works against you because you’re doing,,, you’re sleep walking.

For instance, you inhale a soda and bag of potato chips and suddenly realize only after you polished off the last chip that you blew an entire day of healthy eating – and you weren’t even hungry. You get caught up and lose two hours watching mindless TV – scratch it, let’s give you some credit and make it an educational documentary – before realizing you spaced on preparing for an important presentation to land a valuable client. You blurt out a knee-jerk lie to a loved one for no good reason, when the truth would have worked just fine. What’s going on?

You’ve allowed yourself to make a choice without thinking. And as long as you’re making choices unconsciously, you can’t consciously choose to change that infective behavior and turn it into productive habits. It’s time to WAKE UP and make empowering choices.