I Look the Same Every Day. I Quit!

This is a story about success in business, as much as how I look on a daily basis. I just see far to many parallels between dieting and building a successful business online to not discuss it.

Now this may seem crazy, as you are probably wondering what the heck a "diet" has to do with "business". To help you understand the relevance, let me tell you a little story.

My Journey to Lose Weight Shows NO Results.

I am personally trying to cut down some weight right now, with the hopes of losing 20lbs.
Each and every morning I get up and plunk myself on the scale, weighing myself for the morning. I do this to add predictability to the tracking of my weight. You don't want to weigh yourself at different times during the day if you are trying to track weight loss because it will create inconsistencies.

The results every day vary based on what I ate the day before. If I had high sodium intake (salt), my body is likely retaining water. But if I have actively been focused on my diet, sometimes I will notice my weight very slowly going down throughout the week.

I am hoping to take some pictures documenting my progress, but one thing I noticed is that every single morning when I look in the mirror I look EXACTLY the same as the day before. I could have put in a 2-hour vigorous workout at the gym, with very strict low calorie intake throughout the day and no difference.

I look exactly the same as the day before!

And the worse part is, this happens over and over again. Every day is ground hog day, I don't notice any measurable difference in the way I look.

BUT one thing I learned through various diets and tracking results over the years is that if you take a picture of today, it might not look much different than yesterday. That is because you are conditioned to see yourself in your "current" state, and naturally you won't notice a gradual change of a fraction of a pound in weight loss.

However, if you track this progress over a longer period of time and you compare a picture of today, to a picture of 3-4 weeks ago you will notice considerable difference.

The problem is, we get discouraged by the lack of overnight results as we look the same. That tends to put us in a funk, and naturally it can be very easy to give up on your goals as a result of the lack of progress (or the feeling thereof).

This frustration and feeling of lack of progress extends to just about everything we try to get better and succeed at, including business.

In Business, You Get Up Every Morning to NO Results.

The exact same thing goes for business, and this is the reason so many people get discouraged with business in the same way they do with dieting. You get up everyone morning, and your business is likely going to look exactly the same as the day before. No matter how HARD you worked, you are likely not going to experience big results from your efforts the day prior.

But also like dieting, these smaller moments in time (ex. a day) add up to a much broader and high arching curve of success. The days when you put forth the effort, start to compound to weekly, monthly and yearly results.

Over the past 20 years within the online business world, I have discovered that effort doesn't lead to immediate results. The time and effort I put forth now, will often times show face 6-12 months down the road. That has always been the case.

Also, lack of effort doesn't lead to an immediate downturn in your business. The beauty about the Internet is that you can literally have a successful business up and running and it will operate successfully in "autopilot" for potentially months and years without you doing much. But "not doing much" will eventually catch up to you.

In other words, complacency NOW will lead to failure later. This is a pattern I have seen with almost EVERY successful business owner I have ever worked with. They reach success, and the natural instinct is to enjoy the rewards of their success...and they take their foot off the pedal. That leads an imminent future downturn in business, but it won't show face often times for months or even years.

So just like dieting, the actions you take now (though they don't appear to bear immediate fruits) are the reason that you will achieve success down the road.

And that leads me to...

Small Actions, Compound to Big Results.

Life is a collection of minutes, hours and days. You get up every day and you choose whether you are going to take positive action towards some sort of achievement or not.

Whether this is dieting, or whether this is building a business, these actions compound on one another and lead to much larger accomplishments. In all reality, I cannot lose 20lbs in a day. The same way I cannot create a $1,000 income in a day.
The goal you set for yourself, is the target. How you get there is the incremental, small actions that you take on a daily basis.

You are going to look the same every day when you get up, but that is only because you remember the day before. You don't remember what you looked like 4 weeks ago, or 2 years ago. Don't let the same "look" discourage you, because though you don't appear to be any better off, you are.

Small actions, lead to big success when done over a sustained period of time. In dieting, in business, in life. Just remember that.