As stated - if this self-help thing is new to you, give it a go if you happen to have it lying around. If you don't, there are better books out there. Everyone tries to be Tony Robbins or Stephen Covey, so why not start with them. They won't feed you a magic "you don't have to do anything but wish for shiny stuff" pill. You'll have to do the work, but they're well worth a read. I love Awaken The Giant Within and Personal Power II (TR). Seven Habits by SC is also hard to beat. Be patient. You’ve spent years repeating bad behaviors. It’s going to take years to build good ones. According to the Author, the Compound Effect is always at work. You can make it work for you or it will work against you. He gives the example of three friends. One friend tries to improve himself everyday. He spends some time with his wife, walks for half an hour everyday, cuts 125 calories less in his diet and reads motivational books everyday. The second friend does nothing and is a little bitter about life. The third friend rarely exercises, spends enormous amount of hours watching TV everyday, takes his wife for granted and has a cookie and beer everyday to enjoy life. Where our attention goes there follows the rest of our lives. You can say that you love your family, dedicated to your work, or are all about something else, but your time spent proves more than what you say.

The compound effect is the strategy of reaping huge rewards from small, seemingly insignificant actions. You cannot improve something until you measure it. Always take 100 percent responsibility for everything that happens to you. The Compound Effect summary Not sure where I got this one from, to be honest. Had it lying around, and decided it was a good book to practice a few new speed reading techniques on.

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Here’s the bottom line: You already know all that you need to succeed. You don’t need to learn anything more. If all we needed was more information, everyone with an Internet connection would live in a mansion, have abs of steel, and be blissfully happy. New or more information is not what you need—a new plan of action is. It’s time to create new behaviors and habits that are oriented away from sabotage and toward success. It’s that simple. How to win--every time! The No. 1 strategy to achieve any goal and triumph over any competitor, even if they're smarter, more talented or more experienced. When you lose two weeks of work, you don’t just lose the work you would have done. You also lose momentum and that is the bigger problem. The hardest part of momentum is the beginning. But like pushing the merry-go-round on the playground… Once you get moving you can keep going very easily. The difficulty is not doing big things but doing little things over and over to form the right habits.

The result after 2 and a half years: The third friend is now obese, has got health problems and loses his job and wife. The second friend remains the same and now is more bitter than before. The first friend remains trim, has a happy relationship with his wife and gets a job promotion. More than anything, The Compound Effect left me utterly sad to believe that so many would place personal gain over being kind and loving. Money won't cry at your funeral. Clients won't visit you in the hospital. Tombstones aren't marked with your social media ranking. Garbage in, garbage out. Don’t waste your time watching TV, eating junk, reading useless stuff, consuming negative stories, and more. The Author gives lots of examples like the one above. The plane analogy, the pump analogy and the steam engine analogy.Most importantly the Author has some very practical suggestions to implement good habits and get rid of bad ones. So if you want to lose weight, what many people do, is to buy an expensive gym membership, new gym clothes and shoes to exercise. They work out intensively for an hour a day for 7 days. Then they give up disappointed with the results. Instead the Author suggests that it is better to walk 10 minutes a day and slowly increase it till it becomes a habit like brushing your teeth. In this way you will have long lasting impact for your health. If I were only concerned with success and not at all concerned about being a decent human, I could probably agree with a lot of this book. Find people in your life who will be honest enough to tell you the weaknesses and strengths they see if your life. If you do this, you are on your way to big growth.

Through this special access Darren has been able to uncover the strategies and methods that have powered the most successful people in the world, mixing in lessons and discoveries from his successful entrepreneurial journey and he now distills these coveted insights to mentor and empower millions of achievers globally. The difference between the number one golfer and number ten golfer is just 1.9 strokes. The difference prize money is huge. This book gave me such a different way to view behavior modification as well as changing life-long bad habits (of which I certainly have my fair share). Reading it just before the start of the New Year gave me a lot to think about and I have put several of his suggested methods into effect already. Time to stop whining about the cards you were dealt and do something with them. People less fortunate have done more because they have not used excuses.Ending the book with "if this helped you in any way whatsoever, give five copies to your friends", was just a bit too much.