The Slight Edge

Product Information

The most powerful part of The Slight Edge is the simplicity and practicality of the philosophy. Olsen summarizes many big ideas we may already know, and shows how to apply them in simple, daily steps. The book is sobering yet uplifting at the same time, because it presents so clearly how we can shape our lives, there’s no longer any excuse not to. you cultivate, and finally you harvest. Plant, cultivate, harvest. In today’s world, everyone wants to go directly from plant to harvest. We plant the seed by joining the gym, and then get If Only … “You’re lookin’ good, sir, lookin’ good.” The shoeshine woman was grinning at me. Another customer lost in his early morning thoughts. And another job well done. I looked down: I could see my reflection in my shoes. Indeed I am. Lookin’ good … thank you. Thanks very much. I paid her, gave her as big a tip as I could without (I hoped) having her feel I was being patronizing, and walked away with clean shoes and a heavy heart. She was right; for me, things were lookin’ good, sir, lookin’ good. But why the beach bum and not the shoeshine woman? Introduction: The Missing Ingredient..................................................................................1 Foreword: The Road to the Slight Edge.............................................................................9 Three Stories........................................................................................................................15 Part One: The Slight Edge Chapter 1 Oh come on” you protest… Give us a break here! It’s one Saturday morning – a few minutes out of one Saturday morning! That hardly has life consequences”

And these things are simple. They are tiny, positive habits that we do to make our lives much better in the long term. If you’ve already read Darren Hardy’s “Compound effect”, you probably won’t walk away with lots of new insights.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:

Mastery begins the moment you step onto the path. Failure begins the moment you step off the path." 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 ... Focusing on Philosophy, not Results. Why we should not focus on results (which = focusing on the past). The Water Hyacinth The water hyacinth is a beautiful, delicate-looking little plant. Prized as an ornament, it sports six-petaled flowers ranging from a lovely purplish blue, to lavender, to pink. You can find it floating on the surface of ponds in warm climates around the world. The water hyacinth is also one of the most productive plants on earth; its reproductive rate astonishes botanists and ecologists. Although a single plant can produce as many as 5,000 seeds, the method it prefers for colonizing a new area is to grow by doubling itself, sending out short runner stems that become “daughter plants.” If a pond’s surface is fairly still and undisturbed, the water hyacinth may cover the entire pond in thirty days. On the first day, you won’t even notice it. In fact, for the first few weeks you will have to search very hard to find it. On day 15, it will cover perhaps a single square foot of the pond’s surface ... a barely significant dollop of color dotting the expanse of placid green. On the twentieth day (two-thirds of the way to the end of the month), you may happen to notice a dense little patch of floating foliage, about the size of a small mattress. You would be easily forgiven if you mistook it for a boy’s inflatable life raft, left behind during a family picnic. On day 29, one-half of the pond’s surface will be open water. On the thirtieth day, the entire pond will be covered by a blanket of water hyacinth. You will not see any water at all. The Slight Edge pushes that eventually creates movement of such astonishing momentum in their lives.For the person who's actually motivated by cheerleaders yelling "Go you, you can do it!" then this book might actually be for you. For everyone else, skip it. The Slight Edge is constantly at work; once you make a firm decision to step onto the upper curve and consistently apply the 7 Slight Edge principles, you can turn any area of your life around in a few years. In fact, genuine success in any one area of your life tends to spread to other areas.

Key Points of Chapter 3 The most powerful force for change is time. Position your daily actions so time is working for instead of against you. Because time will either promote you or expose you. What keeps you on the path is your Slight Edge philosophy which includes your understanding of the secret of time. Knowing that if I stay on this path long enough I will get the results I want. In today’s world, everyone wants to go directly from plant to harvest. The step we keep overlooking is the step of cultivating. And that, unlike planting and harvesting, takes place only through the patient dimension of time. The right choices you make today, compounded over time, will take you higher up the success curve. I don't want to give away too much of this book, just trust it's a must read. It's a really phenomenally written book with so many great things about it. I'll also truly endorse that if you follow the slight edge in whatever area of your life you may need it, it will work. It's not a complex principle or something unique you've never heard, it's simply a book that is written to really put it into your mind where you need to start and how easy it really is if you keep doing it! The single most important thing about The Slight Edge is this: it’s already working, right now, either for you or against you. So don’t wait. Our hope that you will put in place something. Perhaps a financial plan for yourself so that you are constantly building equity. Some simple, daily, weekly or monthly discipline that over time will buy you your financial freedom. The Slight Edge is all about living in the moment. For me personally, it is perhaps the hardest lesson to learn about the Slight Edge: you can’t find it in the past or the future, only right here, right now. The reason Ekhart Tolle’s modest little 1997 book on enlightenment, The Power of Now, took the marketplace by storm, selling over two million copies in thirty languages, is that his core message is one that everyone knows they need to hear: your life exists only in the moment. But you can’t really absorb or live that truth through reading a book; you absorb and live that truth simply by being fully in the process of living your life—not regretting the past, not dreading the future. The Slight Edge is about your awareness. It is about you making the right choices, the choices that serve you and empower you, starting right now and continuing for the rest of your life, and learning to make them effortlessly. This book is about putting the Slight Edge to work for you, instead of against you. It’s easy to do. And it’s easy not to do. And if you don’t do it, it won’t kill you or destroy your chances for success today. But that simple error in judgment, compounded over time, will kill your chances for success. It will take you down and out of your life forever. And that choice is always yours. The choice of simple things, and the wisdom to make that choice. The wealthy man was right: the third gift is one that you can only claim; it’s something nobody can give you. It’s also something no one can take away from you. If the Slight Edge is right, and you can have an incredible life by consistently taking unintimidating positive actions — why doesn’t everybody have an incredible lifestyle? Answer: easiness, myths, and miscalculations.The formula for success is quite simple: double your rate of failure. — Thomas J. Watson, Sr. (founder of IBM) The alarm goes off at 6am. Now you face a choice. And that is the good news, because every moment you have in life you face a choice. Where you are right now is poised in the present, with the past stretching far behind and future ahead. Saving 10 dollars today doesn’t seem to make a difference in the grand scheme of things, but saving 10 dollars every day will make you a millionaire in 40 years (at an average 8% interest rate) Just Add Life and Stir ... The Slight Edge philosophy is the missing ingredient you need for all the personal-development books, how-to’s and life guides to work. If you don’t grasp the truth of the Slight Edge, then no matter what health books you read, you’re not going to be willing to do the little things that lead