How Every Person Can Find Success in Life — Even During Covid-19

How many of us have given up on our New Year’s Resolutions already? We get all excited in December. Then the week leading up to New Years, we go “come January 1, things are going to be so much different!” We start making all these plans and implementing all these changes come January 1, but then they don’t last. Why? Over the next few posts, I’m going to address this, as there is more than one factor involved. Today, we’ll look at one of the ingredients to making lasting change.

For a long time, I wondered what the secret was to living a successful life rather than a mediocre one. What was the secret to success and lasting change? Then one day, while speaking at a conference, I had the opportunity to sit in on a presentation done by Canadian Rapper/Hip Hop Artist D.O. aka Defy the Odds (his real name is Duane Gibson) and it all became clear to me.

In his presentation, Duane talked about how when he was young, he had just switched schools and was having a hard time in math. His teacher gave him a secret — just try to get 1% better a day. He still uses that strategy to this day in his rapping and music. That clicked with me. If you practice something every day, you can easily get 1% better per day!

As soon as I got home, I started putting this into action. Every day, I kept telling myself I just needed to get 1% better per day. At first it was frustrating because I didn’t think I was seeing much improvement, but then one day, it was like everything compounded and all of a sudden a goal was reached. For example, there is a really big, long, steep hill by my house. I have a torn ACL in one knee so it makes walking difficult at times. My goal was to be able to walk up that huge hill with my dog and make it to the top without stopping. I live in the country, so each day, I would push myself to go one fence post further. When I started to get tired, I would say to myself, “just one fence post further — do 1% a day!” After a couple of months, I reached the top of that hill without stopping! I’m now using this same strategy to pivot my businesses to more virtual offerings this year. When I look back to March 2020, I can’t believe how far I’ve come in this task! I would have never thought it possible for me to have a blog and a podcast with a You Tube Channel coming soon!

Recently, I started reading the book “Atomic Habits” by James Clear. Right there, in Chapter One, was that familiar idea of 1% again. We often hear that to have massive success, you need to take massive action. While that is partly true, it’s not always realistic or sustainable over a long period of time. Actually, this idea that you have to take massive action is one of the reasons people fail with New Years Resolutions and in other areas of their life. Especially when you are trying to reach a goal like losing weight, body building, running a marathon or even growing your business. It’s tough to take massive action in areas like these (and many others) and not burn out, or get discouraged when you don’t see instant results and find it difficult to sustain and maintain all the changes. Which is why it’s best to have the 1% per day strategy in your mind.

Now the danger with the 1% a day is that some people get discouraged because they don’t see quick or instant results. They don’t see the scale move as fast as they want or their income increase at the level they would like. But the key is patience. The interesting thing about the 1% a day improvement is that it compounds every day on top of itself just like the compound interest your receive on a bank account or investment. So after 365 days (or 366 days in a leap year) you can be leaps and bounds from where you started! When you look back a year later or even five years later, you realize just how far you have come.

For example, think of a person trying to crack open a piece of rock to get a precious gem that is inside. You watch that person hit that rock 100 times with a hammer and chisel without seeing anything happening. But then all of a sudden, on the 101st time, the rock splits open. Was it because the person hit the chisel differently that time? No! It’s because all the effort they put in on the first 100 times made tiny changes that we didn’t see until that 101st blow.

This 1% ideology is the true secret to success.

However, the opposite is true if you decline by 1% a day. Declining by 1% per day will drop you back to zero in no time. For example, eating bad food and drinking alcohol during Covid-19 may seem like a small thing. Maybe the scale didn’t move much at first and your health doesn’t decline too badly after one week. But after one month, you start to see the effects and after one year, the health effects could be catastrophic. So in a time of Covid-19, it’s absolutely essential that we don’t give up and that we all strive for 1% better per day instead of 1% worse per day.

So how do you strive for 1% better per day? It’s simple actually.

1. Pick a goal or task you want to achieve/accomplish. It could be as simple learning some new knowledge or a new skill, exercising more to get in shape, or improving relationships with people.
2. Take Action! For example, using the skills above examples would be the following: To increase knowledge, try reading a few minutes a day or start off by reading one page. Then increase is slowly until you get up to 30 minutes a day, then maintain that 30 minutes a day. You’ll be surprised at how much extra knowledge you will have by just reading that 30 minutes a day. To exercise more, start off with a few minutes and again gradually increase until you are at the level you want to be whether that be walking for 30 minutes or lifting a certain amount of weight. To improve relationships with people, just try being a bit nicer in every interaction you have with people.
3. Assess after a while whether or not it’s working for you. If not, adjust a little bit and keep going! Don’t give up!

If you are still doubtful that 1% increases can lead to massive success over time, I want to leave you with a story James Clear opens with in Chapter One of his book Atomic Habits. The British Bicycling Team had been mediocre for years. Up until 2008, they had only won one gold medal at the Olympic Games and had never won the Tour de France. In fact, they were so mediocre that some bicycle companies wouldn’t sell their bikes to the team for fear that it would hurt their sales if people saw the British team using their bikes.

But then in 2003, everything changed when they hired Dave Brailsford to be their new performance director. Dave believed in “the aggregation of marginal gains” which is similar to making 1% changes. He slowly made small changes with the team. They started with the bicycle seats by transitioning to more comfortable seats and moved their way up to more aerodynamic clothing, figuring out which workouts worked best for each athlete and even went so far as to determine which pillow and mattress led to the best night sleep for each racer. There were several more actions taken, I’ve only mentioned a few.

Through these 1% changes, in just five years, the British Cycling Team became one of the best. The took home 60% of the gold medals available at the 2008 Olympic Games. In 2012, at the next Olympics, they set nine Olympic records and seven World Records. They also won the Tour de France five times over a six year period.

So, next time you start doubting the power of improving by 1% per day, remember the story of the British Cycling Team.

All it takes is patience, adjusting when necessary and when you fail or have a bad day, just pick up where you left off. You can re-start the next hour, next day or the next week. You don’t have to wait for January 1st to change your life!

Remember, you are only one decision away from changing your life!

Amanda Oling is a motivational speaker and an impaired driving prevention speaker near Grande Prairie, Alberta, Canada. To learn more about Amanda, visit www.AmandaOling.com