I’m going to tell you something right now – that you may or may not already know – you’re being too hard on yourself!

This whole “tough love” thing has its place. With this said, simple support, kindness and love often does the job better and gets the job done.

Which is hard! And believe me, I learned this the hard way.

Over here, on my end, I’m raising two little kids. One is 4 and one is 2. And another one is coming any day now.

And so, add to my stress, I noticed at one point that “Those other parents read to their kids 8 hours a day.”

My first thought was, “Oh my god … We’re terrible parents. We’re not teaching them to read and write. And there’s no structure whatsoever. Oh my god. We suck as parents.”

Okay. Stop.

This is what I was talking about! This “tough love” thing where we are focusing on the problem doesn’t work!

So what did I do? I journaled. And I talked myself through it.

“You want to focus 99% on the solution. It’s important to be realistic. But even with that, don’t live there.”

Instead, we need to shift our identity, from Victim to Creator, by saying “We are GREAT parents – and we are going to figure this out! Baby steps! Let’s focus on some baby steps!”

Instead of saying we suck, we focused on taking baby steps in the right direction.

Baby Steps

“We are going to take a bunch of baby steps to get us where we need to be. Every day we are going to improve. We are on the right track! We can do this! Let’s go! High fives!”

Just showing up is where we began. My wife and I high five’d each other. Like a sports team encouraging each other.

So: I decided to do a new routine. I started the day by going on a walk – and then I said “After the walk, I teach the kids for half an hour.”

It’s a baby step. It’s a baby step toward focusing on taking action and again – using baby steps to do so.

Teaching the kids to me meant: 10 minutes of phonics, 10 minutes of writing, and 10 minutes of reading. And again – through this whole thing we gave each other LOTS OF HIGH FIVES to cheer ourselves on.

The Power of Compounding

Once there was a king who was approached by an inventor. The inventor gave him a cool game that he made up. It was called CHESS.

The king couldn’t believe it! This was the best game he had ever played. This was the best game ever.

“Listen inventor, I’m so impressed by you, I’ll give you any reward that you want,” the king told him.

“Okay,” the inventor said. “Great! Here’s what I want.”

The inventor pulled out his chessboard and explained. “Can you please give me a single grain of rice.”

“Yes,” the king said.

“Wonderful. As you can see, I am placing it on the first square of the chessboard.”

“Great,” the king said.

“Now,” said the inventor, “I will place two grains on the second square of the chessboard.”

“Okay,” said the king.

“And we’ll place four grains on the third square. Doubling each time.”

“Okay,” said the king again.

“And my reward will simply be how many grains of rice are left by the time we get to the end of the squares on the chessboard.”

“DONE!” the king shouted. “You have a deal!”

The king was so happy. All he had to pay the inventor was a few grains of rice. It almost sounded too good to be true.

A few days went by. And then, about a week later, the inventor went before the king and explained that he still hadn’t been paid.

This was embarrassing for the king. He never left debts unpaid.

“Treasurer!” the king shouted.

The treasurer came into the king’s royal quarters.

“Why has the inventor not been paid?” the king asked.

“Well,” the treasurer said. “We simply do not have that much rice, my Lordship.”

The king chortled. “What do you mean we don’t have that much rice?”

“Well, um … You know how you were doubling the rice on each square?”

“Yes?” asked the king.

“Well,” the treasurer took a deep gulp. “My king, by the time you get halfway through the chessboard, the amount of grain that is required is more than all the grain we have here in the entire kingdom.”

“What?”

“By the time you get to the end of the squares, there are over 18 quintillion grains of rice on the board,” the treasurer said.

The king could not believe it.

“What is a quintillion?” the king asked, baffled.

“It’s enough to feed 100 tons of rice to every human on the planet, sire.”

It is said that the king was so upset – and so embarrassed – that he actually had the inventor killed. That’s what you get for trying to outwit the king.

COMPOUNDING BEATS DOUBT

We learn from this that compounding, or exponential growth – is the most powerful force in the universe.

And so by utilizing this knowledge, by taking this knowledge we can apply it. And just start taking new baby steps every day.

Meaning, if I just show up every day and do a little bit more – then we will succeed. No matter what.

Compounding beats doubt. It beats the doubt of all those little thoughts that tell me I can’t do it.

Doubt simply cannot keep up.

Compounding is the most powerful thing in the universe.

When I first discovered this law, it was one of the greatest days of my life. Because I realized that no matter what happens to me, I will always succeed if I use this formula.

For me, I apply it first with my health. And I focus ALL ENERGY on one individual task. And I make sure that the task is completed.

For example: I’m going to walk every day. I did this for one month until the habit set in.

And then, I added another task. Teaching the kids.

So now, for the first hour of the day, I walk and then teach the kids.

With this said, when I grew up, my mom had me play the piano for just 10 minutes a day.

That 10 minutes turned into a habit. And then it compounded. I played for an hour a day. Just for fun. And then two. And next thing you know, I was giving recitals at the church.

Baby Steps

So if I may ask you, what is one thing you can do, every day, that is really really small, for 10 minutes, that will totally change your life?

Just focus on ONE thing. Get it perfect. The key is not to do more than one thing at a time.

And you’ll need a tracker of some kind. Where you write down your progress or at least check in with yourself.

Here’s a great book that talks about this, it’s called, “The Compound Effect” by Darren Hardy.

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