The Power Of The Small And Constant
How is our power best marshaled and used to the desired effect? We tend to focus on the big and meaningful - grand gestures, new resolutions, and products that promise deliverance to the desired place. In doing so, we often take our eyes off the most productive way to build the life of our choice. We don’t pay attention to the small things we can do over long periods of time. But that’s where the magic is. Let’s see how it works!
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The Power Of The Small And Constant
One of the annoying side effects of the technological age, with its miracle-like breakthroughs that have elevated the human condition, is misapprehension. One particularly limiting notion causes us to grow cocky because we're exposed to so many products and services that promise relief and results for nearly every pain point. We have come to think there are fixes for nearly every problem. We look to experts, doctors, advisors, and politicians and expect solutions, especially solutions that make our paths quick and easy. This picture does not match the reality of the world, nor should it.
Quick and easy does not produce the panacea we imagine. Pills, supplements, or medicines do not relieve our need to eat healthy food and avoid toxins, for example. Our confidence in experts is not without cost. We often fail to pay attention to the risks and consequences of our actions or inactions partly because we think we will be able to mitigate negative effects, and we can, just not to the degree we imagine. Maximizing our personal power requires clarity about these dynamic relationships.
We benefit when our decisions are higher quality, meaning our plans work the way we want them to. Rather than fall prey to the seductive lure of the fast and easy, better paths usually mean embracing the power of the small and constant. One dramatization of this concept leaps into my mind. It's the character of Andy Dufresne, played by Tim Robbins in the Stephen King novella screen adaptation by Frank Darabont, The Shawshank Redemption. The critically acclaimed film portrayed one of the more tragic stories that can happen to a person, being unjustly imprisoned.
The title gives us the theme. Shawshank is a prison. Through Andy, other characters find redemption and justice. Andy's heroic character was exactly what we're considering in this show. He was hopeful. That hope inspired him to apply pressure and do so over long periods of time. It ultimately gave him his freedom. The same thing works for everyone if we learn from Andy.
Hope is simply the belief that things will work the way we perceive as preferable or, at minimum, proper. Time is the perception of cause and effect that forms in conscious minds. What is pressure? Pressure is directed force. It tends to build up when it encounters resistance. Depending on the nature of the force and the obstacle, it will either equalize or break. When we call upon our power or our force, what can we do to make sure the obstacle breaks before we do and maximize our results?
Hope is simply the belief that things will work the way we perceive as preferable or, at minimum, proper.
Here are a couple of suggestions. Make the action sustainable, which means small enough to apply over time, and apply the pressure or the action constantly. What can we do that is constant and small that applies this pressure? Andy dug a little bit at a time every day for nineteen years. For us, it can be any small thing that provides progress toward a desired result. It could be saving money. It could be exercising. It could be doing good deeds. It could be meditating. It could be learning.
Each daily deed by itself is nothing. This is where the appreciation for the small and constant comes into play. Over time, these incremental efforts result in massive differences, especially when the gains are the things that produce even more gains. A way to picture this is to consider the power of compound interest. Compound interest is different than simple interest in that we earn interest on the interest. It's a tiny difference in the short-term, but let's take a look at what it means over the course of our lifetimes.
Power Of The Small: Over time, these incremental efforts result in massive differences.
Let's say our grandparents gift us $1,000 when we're born. They put it in the bank, and it pays a non-changing 5% interest. We don't make any deposits and withdrawals. We don't even remember it's there. At age 50, we find the account. If the account paid simple interest, meaning 5% on the initial deposit every year, we would find a balance of $3,500. It's not bad, but if the account paid compound interest, meaning that each period paid interest on the interest already earned, the account would have almost $11,500 in it, more than three times as much.
Since these relationships, whether it's money or anything else, tend to be exponential or logarithmic, the longer we go, the bigger the difference is. If we drew the example out another ten years, the simple interest account would have $4,000 in it. The compound interest account would approach $19,000, almost five times as much. The same thing applies to any process in life where we're building upon skills, knowledge, or capacities. We can learn something, think we got it, and go on to something else.
That's what most of us do most of the time for most of the things we learn in life. This kind of learning is good in that we get to apply those lessons over and over, and the investment in time and energy continues to benefit us, but what happens if we apply the concept of compounding? What if we adopt the attitude that no matter how much we learn, there's always much more to know than we know and continue to learn in the areas most crucial to our aims? We will continue to build over the course of our lives. We end up far ahead of where we would otherwise.
This is one of the secrets of very successful people. They continue to work on their craft, expand their knowledge, and increase their network and reach. They live by the words, "Tomorrow, I'll be better than I am today." Over the course of our lives, such discipline makes a more dramatic difference than the compound interest example we saw. This investment pays in ways we can't calculate.
What price would you pay to have nearly all of your personal power where you have total command of your internal landscape? If we wish to live by that credo, what might be the best strategy? Often, we look for shortcuts. We want the one insight that will give us an advantage. We want a dramatic, fast rise. Rarely do such things work out. We're far better advised to value the small and consistent. We do what we can keep doing. It's not so difficult to do what we can do. What happens? Why don't we all live our lives with the power of compounding and thus reach the successes we dreamt of in our younger days?
It may not be difficult to do the small and consistent, but that doesn't make it easy because we must say no to something to sustain something. That's the hard part. Why? It's because we tend to overfocus on the short-term and lack discipline. Discipline is a crucial success, habit, and skill. We lack discipline when we allow the convenience, the novel, and the seductive to take us off course. We get distracted. We chase pleasure. It's understandable. If we're super motivated, we can resist such things or at least keep them under control, but there's something else we must learn to conquer.
Discipline is a crucial success habit and skill. We lack discipline when we allow the convenient, the novel, and the seductive to take us off course.
We're conflicted. We have multiple priorities, and they can't all be fully served consistently. We will knuckle down in one area and neglect a dozen others. How do we get ourselves past that dilemma? In a word, it's sacrifice. Life is strange in this way. We can have almost anything we want, but we can't have everything. To get something big means we can't have something else.
In modern Western society, we're so wealthy that this immutable reality often becomes obscured. We take much for granted and sometimes experience so many blessings that we lose sight of how they came to be. No matter what we're thankful for, a big part of the reason it happened is someone's willingness to sacrifice. This is the central lesson of Christianity.
Whether you're practicing Christian or not, the wisdom of Jesus is incredibly valuable. It continues to transform the world over 2,000 years after Christ's death. The wisdom of the Christ story does not require an argument over his divinity and miracle-making. The story is psychologically true. We all have a cross to bear. We are all required to sacrifice. We are all required to serve. The variables are exactly what cross we will carry, what we're willing to sacrifice, and what we will dedicate our energies and efforts to. These choices determine the conditions of our lives, the world around us, and our fates.
Power Of The Small: Real-life heroes conquer all manner of obstacles, and they do so because they embrace the small and the constant.
When we become unwilling to bear a cross, meaning to stand for something we believe in, and we are unwilling to sacrifice, meaning willingly give up something we desire in favor of the thing we believe in, sooner or later, we're heading for trouble. That's what reality is. It's the force that impinges upon us when we're out of kilter in these regards. This means our task is to identify the group of things that matter most to us. Usually, these are the people we love and who love us. It could also be our art. It could be the talent we cultivate. It could be a combination.
Whatever we decide, we need to make the main thing the main thing. We break longer-term objectives in these dimensions into small, sustainable actions. We exercise our wills using discipline to take these actions. We don't let distractions knock us off course, at least not for an extended period. When we do falter, we simply dust ourselves off and get back to it. That's what Andy Dufresne did, and he had headwinds most of us couldn't imagine, but he's fictional. Yes and no. Real-life heroes conquer all manner of obstacles, and they do so because they embrace the small and the constant. Let's go.