The way to success lies not in a magical one time fix but by gradual improvement over a long period of time. The book Atomic Habits by James Clear talks about systems that we live by. We have to think about change as a continuum. Even those times that we consider in our lives as defining moments such as graduating from college, starting a family, or accomplishing a goal were all preceded by events that led to it.
In Atomic Habits, James Clear makes the argument that one way to improve ourselves is by trying to improve ourselves every day by one percent. He asks us to look at every facet of our lives and reevaluate ourselves to see what small improvements we can make.
The Power of Compound Growth
From Atomic Habits, chapter 1, page 16:
Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement. The same way that money multiples through compound interest, the effects of your habits multiply as you repeat them. They seem to make little difference on any given day and yet the impact they deliver over the months and years can be enormous. It is only when looking back two, five, or perhaps ten years later that the value of good habits and the cost of bad ones become strikingly apparent.
-James Clear
Let us look at a real example in our lives. How many of us make new year resolutions? And how many times have we failed after making these new year resolutions? We are trying to artificially make a life-changing event. While some of us may have seen success, how much of that is already due to the effort and progress already made before that resolution?
We should not wait for success to come to us. It is helpful to break out time by day, by week, by month and year. But we have to remember that the right time is not coming because the right time is now. Now is the time. Today is the day. Each and every day is an opportunity to become just a bit better than the day we were before. No one but us is stopping ourselves from doing so.
Today we can take action that can improve us. Not tomorrow and not next week. Today. It is perfectly fine to start small. Look for those one percent improvement. Solutions and answers do not need to be immense and revolutionary. We can take action now. Start reading a book. Look into and implement new and better habits that you can build now. For example, I mentioned an easy action you can take in my previous blog post to get a better night’s sleep.
The only one who truly limits ourselves is us. It is time for us to start thinking again about thinking, growing and aspiring to become more.