Have you heard of the snowball effect?
When it comes to establishing positive habits, it’s important to remember that even small efforts in the right direction can build up to something big if they are applied deliberately and consistently. It’s called the snowball effect and as the Kyocera philosophy points out, continuously creating habits to better ourselves “illuminates the fundamental ethical and moral values at the heart of human goodness”.
When deciding to create a positive habit in pursuit of a greater goal, it’s unlikely that you will see immediate results, so it’s important to keep at it consistently.
This article on the Small Business Site suggests that the secret to shifting things from mediocrity to success can lie in making a tiny amount more effort every day. Taking five minutes per day to send a couple of extra emails or make a call can build up over time and lead to extra sales, referrals or repeat business.
The article goes on to say that to create powerful habits you need to give them some sort of significance by giving yourself a goal or a reward. Make enough extra sales and you can elevate your camping holiday to beach vacation in the Maldives, for example. “Attaching significance to the behaviour (or lack of it) makes it easier to get into a habit and in a short space of time, you’ll begin to get into a rhythm.”
It’s also important to be patient and stay focussed. Being successful at most things is a matter of persistence, patience and focus. If you want to get a degree, you have to be persistent. If you want to lose weight, you have to consistently focus on calorie deficit. If you want to be a millionaire, you have to be determined and constant. None of these achievements come about through one brilliant act (unless you win the lottery), but rather achievement is through a regular series of actions which are individually small enough for anyone to achieve.
One way to put this snowball effect into practice is through visual stimulation. For example, pin, up a postcard of your dream holiday destination / dream home / dream physique, so that when you find yourself flagging, you have a visual reminder of why you are putting in the extra effort. With a tangible reward at the end of it, the effort is worthwhile.
Marcell Otto - Software Product Specialist - Kyocera Document Solutions South Africa
