The hyperbole surrounding self-improvement books is vast. We are all attracted to the idea of greatness, the chance to really strike out and make a name for ourselves. So we throw good money after bad buying books, products and seminars that promise to make us great. However, the truth is, we are not all going to be gold medalists in life.
Just because you will not go to the Olympics and win gold for swimming does not mean you can’t go swimming every day and love it and benefit from it and improve at it. If we tie our actions to grandiose end results we will, more often than not, fall short and become frustrated and disappointed. If we focus on the process and tiny, incremental improvements we will find great success and fulfillment.
My process is to focus on the aggregation of marginal gains. My goal is not to be the best at any one thing. My goal is to have an awesome life. To me that means so many different aspects of my life have to keep improving: not just my fitness, but my income, my relationships, my peace of mind and more. So the plan, as far as I have found, is to make small, 1% improvements to each area of my life over time. The aggregation or sum of all these improvements leads to a better life with less things to complain about and more happiness.
Each day I try to do something positive in the areas of nutrition, fitness, hygiene, finances, mindfulness, relationships, gratitude, generosity, and more. If I put pressure on myself to do something epic in each area, I will fail. If I merely try to make a positive action with regards to all these areas it not that hard but the cumulative effect is that I have created a better day and feel good about myself.
Create a list of 5 or 10 things that would positively effect your life and try to do make a small impact each day on that list.