The Slight Edge

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This fast-moving book teaches you one of the most powerful, practical and important success principles ever discovered. It can change your life!” —Brian Tracy, author of The Way to Wealth A positive philosophy turns into a positive attitude, which turns into positive actions, which turn into positive results, which turn into a positive lifestyle. A negative philosophy turns into a negative attitude, which turns into negative actions, which turn into negative results, which turn into a negative lifestyle. I’ve presented the story of the penny doubled every day to hundreds and hundreds of audiences, and often I hear a comment like this: Wow, that’s amazing ... to think that you could start with nothing and build a fortune! That’s not quite accurate: you don’t start with nothing. You Are you living within your means and investing income into a program that will build equity? Or borring out of credit? Olsen also takes us through 5 key areas of our lives, including health, personal development, relationships, finances, and life in general. For each of these areas, list down the following:

Key Points of Chapter 1 People everywhere are clamoring for the formula, the secret ingredient, the path to improve their lives. The secret ingredient is your philosophy: what you know, how you hold it and how it affects what you do. Once you change the way you think then you can take the steps that will lead you to the “how-to’s.” The things you do every day, the things that don’t look like they matter, do matter. They not only make a difference—they make all the difference. Instant Life” If you were offered the same choice the wealthy man gave his sons, would you choose the million dollars or the penny? Most people would make the second boy’s choice: the right-now money—the quantum leap. After all, a million dollars! In cash! Right now! And, of course, you’d be making the wrong choice—and you would have been fooled, as millions of people around the globe are fooled every minute of every hour of every day, by those two seductive little words: Right now! I remember one day seeing a man standing in front of a microwave, fidgeting impatiently as he peered through the window at his lunch being cooked, and muttering, “Come onnnn ... come onnnn ... !” It blew my mind. Sixty seconds wasn’t fast enough?! It’s become a truism to say we live in a push-button, instant-access, fastfood kind of world where we want everything yesterday. This doesn’t mean we have more impatient temperaments than our parents did. It represents an entirely different way of thinking. An entirely different philosophy. If you want to measure where you are, if you want to know whether you’re on the success curve or on the failure curve, or if you want to assess anyone else and determine which curve they’re on, here’s how. There is one attitude, one state of mind, which overwhelmingly predominates either side of the curve. The predominant state of mind displayed by those people on the failure curve is blame. The predominant state of mind displayed by those people on the success curve is responsibility.” – The Slight Edge Apply the Slight Edge Principles and Stir! I have used the principles of the Slight Edge to improve my physical fitness, starting with one push-up and one sit-up a day, adding another each day and building to over 100 per day. I have used it to help pay off debt, build my savings and investments, and improve my relationships with my children. If your professional life growing every day? Are you moving along a path that is taking you towards greater accomplishments and fulfillment in your chosen occupation?You’ve probably heard the story of compound interest before. In fact many times. What is the big deal about it all? Nothing… Unless you act on it. Success in life comes one day at a time and, as Jeff Olson suggests, one step at a time. The Slight Edge will show you how your daily decisions can be the ultimate key to your success.” —Ken Blanchard, co-author of The One Minute Manager® and Lead with LUV

In this Australian edition, you’ll read the life-changing concepts of the original book, and learn what author Jeff Olson discovered as he continued along The Slight Edge path: the Secret to Happiness and the Ripple Effect. The Slight Edge isn’t just the story of these discoveries―it’s a way to continue to create life-altering dynamics; a way of thinking and processing information that impacts your daily choices and leads you to the success and happiness you desire. In this chapter, the author’s daughter wrote an advertisement for the book the reader already bought, explaining how big of an impact the slight edge had on her. Fundamentally, we all take pretty much the same actions every day. We eat, sleep, think, feel, talk and listen. We have relationships and friendships. We each have twenty-four hours a day, 8,760 hours a year, and we each fill these hours one way or the other with a sequence of little tasks and actions, any one of which is seemingly insignificant. Gold medal marathon runners eat and sleep. So do people who are thirty pounds overweight. Successful entrepreneurs think and feel and have relationships with other people. So do those who are unemployed or even living on the streets. People who make lots of money read books. People who are broke read books, too. The successful and unsuccessful both do the same basic things in their lives, day in and day out. Yet the things successful people do take them to the top, while the things unsuccessful people do take them down and out. So what’s the difference? The difference is their awareness, understanding and use of the Slight Edge in their life and work. Successful winners understand the Slight Edge. Unsuccessful people do not. The difference that will make all the difference between success and failure, between achieving the quality of life you want and settling for less than you desire and deserve, lies one hundred percent in which of those little, “insignificant” actions you choose to do. This is why we are all capable of doing what it takes to be successful. We are all capable of being winners ... and yes, that includes you. The Slight Edge is always working. For you or against you, the Slight Edge is already, always at work in all our lives. The purpose of this book is to help you become aware of it—how it is working in your life, every day, every hour, every moment, in every step you take and every choice you make. Then you should come up with a step-by-step plan to make them work. Your plan won’t work how you think it will, and it’s ok, as long as you reach your goals.

Key Points of Chapter 2 If you learn to understand and apply the Slight Edge, your life will become filled with hundreds of thousands of small, seemingly insignificant actions—all of them easy to do, none of them mysterious, complex or difficult. These are the actions that will create your success. That’s what successful people do: simple things that are easy to do. Here’s the problem: every action that is easy to do, is also easy not to do. If you don’t do them, you won’t suffer, or fail or blow it—today. But that simple error in judgment, compounded over time will ruin your chances for success. The Quantum Leap is the idea that after working out for two weeks, you’ll look like Schwarzenegger.

Introduction: The Missing Ingredient..................................................................................1 Foreword: The Road to the Slight Edge.............................................................................9 Three Stories........................................................................................................................15 Part One: The Slight Edge Chapter 1 Mastery begins the moment you step onto the path. Failure begins the moment you step off the path." The Superachiever That semester, for the first time in my life, I got straight A’s. I went on to business school and graduated at the very top of my class. Fresh out of college, IThe Slight Edge Philosophy 31 you to a healthy life. No matter what you learn, no matter how many books you read, CDs you listen to, or seminars you attend, if you don’t absorb this philosophy of simple steps and their compounded effect over time, you won’t successfully apply those things you learn to create the results you want. The Slight Edge will help you apply all the information you learn from the health book, the sales book, the investment book, the positive attitude book. The Slight Edge is the book you need to read, highlight and reread along with your fitness class, your career planning, your continuing education and pursuit of new skills. The Slight Edge will prepare you to be able to absorb all that other information, guidance and education from all those other books, classes, situations and experiences. Whatever your deepest desires are in life, I want you to have them, and I know you can. That is my passionate belief—and I’ve seen it happen too many times to doubt it. But you need a place to start. The Slight Edge is that starting point. It’s the first ingredient.

For a goal to come true: You must write it down, make it specific and give it a deadline; You must look at it every day; You must understand and pay the price; You must have a plan to start with."

Customer Reviews

The Choice A wealthy man nearing the end of his days summoned his twin sons to his bedside. Before he died, he told them, he wanted to pass on to them the opportunity to experience the richness of life that he had enjoyed for his many years on earth. “If I could do so, I would give you both the world,” he told his boys, “but this is not possible, for even I do not own the entire world and everything in it. But there are three treasures I have had the good fortune to experience in my life, and it is my fondest wish, my dying wish, that you would both have these three treasures. “The first gift is easy to give, and never runs out. I have been giving it to you both since you were born, and die in peace knowing that you both already have it in abundance. “The second gift is easy to give, but not always easy to have. For some, it never runs out, while for others, it constantly runs out. This gift I give you now, but whether or not you keep it will be up to you. “The third gift is impossible to give, but can only be gained. I have been showing it to you both your entire lives, but cannot say whether or not you have gained it. This gift I cannot give you, but I can give you an opportunity to see it one last time before I die.” The boys both wept to hear their father speak of his approaching death, but he smiled and bade them hush with a wave of his hand. “I see your grief, but in that grief you may be happy, for it is evidence of the first gift, which you have in abundance. Do you know what the first gift is?” The two boys dried their tears and furrowed their brows in deep thought. Easy to give, and it never runs out ... Suddenly the first boy clapped his hands and said, “Love! The first gift is love!” The father smiled. The boy was right. “And the second gift?” he asked them. They again became quiet with thought. Easy to give, but not always easy to have ...