There’s only been a few moments in my life that my brain broke in two.
When I was 10, my younger brother (3) had a habit of picking up anything in his sight and chucking it at me.
Sometimes if I was lucky, it’d be Lego pieces.
Other times it’d be shoes.
One time he stumbled under the pool table and found a #8 black pool ball.
Yeah. That one really hurt.
My mom walked into the room and found me sobbing on the couch with blood dripping down my face and a pool ball-sized welt on my head.
Little did she know that moment of pain would be a breakthrough for me.
It proved to me something was possible: Getting even with the younger brother who tried to Cain and Abel me.
I started planning. I’d…
Okay, that last part never happened.
I just spent days crying on the couch....until I realized that he was 3 years old and I could just hide all the dangerous projectile objects in the house.
For some reason, it never occurred to me to just baby-proof the house to protect myself. (Which I did.)
I'm happy to say all my teeth are still intact, and my brother hasn’t murdered me yet.
Anyhow…
That was one of those moments where my brain "split in two".
More brain splitting examples include:
When I made my first $ online.
When I landed my first client.
When I taught my first class.
Reaching 1000 followers.
These were all moments of sudden insight, inspiration, and enlightenment that proved to me something was possible.
Hmm, I guess I can teach...
Wow... getting a client wasn't THAT hard...
Growing on Twitter can be pretty fun...
I call them breakthrough moments.
Breakthroughs are the key to sustained growth, success, and happiness.
And that's why it's important to learn how to engineer small wins that lead up to big breakthroughs.
What do I mean?
Take being an online creator for example.
Many online creators are always trying to grow their Twitter audience... and aim for some ridiculous goal like 10k followers.
For many it takes years of hard work, hustling, seeing rejection after rejection, "tweeting into the void" and not quitting to get just a few hundred followers.
It sucks.
But every once in a while...
You'll hit internet gold.
You reach 10 followers.
20 followers.
100 followers.
500 Followers.
1000 Followers.
And suddenly you hit jackpot!
Ah yes, breakthrough.
The problem is…
Everyone always optimizes for the 10k (huge goal), but often neglect the smaller wins.
They’re too stuck seeing the grand goal to picture the next step.
They’re too obsessed with winning “big once” instead of winning “more often”
They’re too bogged down by the times they’ve tried and failed…and can’t picture that they’d ever win.
We love to optimize, fantasize, and strategize for the (huge goal), but often neglect the smaller wins.
And it's in the smaller wins, where the inspiration, energy, and action to take on the bigger challenges come from.
Of course, it's important to have big goals.
But what I've discovered is that if you focus on the small wins, you'll find yourself at that major breakthrough in no time.
TL;DR
Success doesn’t happen overnight. It's a result of
Consistent action (of course).
A thousand small wins.
If you optimize for the next small win, it generates a snowball effect.
See you next week!
Brian “8-ball” To
P.S. I recommend reading “The Gap and The Gain: The High Achievers' Guide to Happiness, Confidence, and Success”, by Dan Sullivan if you want to dive deeper into the mentality of consistent wins.