When I was a teenager, my mum would always asks me to make my bed each morning, and my typical reply would be: “mum, why do I need to make my bed when I will go back into it 16 hours later?”. And my mum would reply: “if you can’t even do the small things, how will you be able to do the big things when you grow up?” Looking back now, I think this is one of the wisest advices I’ve received, doing the small things define your characters and positively impact your attitude towards everything in life. So today I’d like to share with you some examples on why doing the small things would make you more successful and feeling more fulfilled.
An US navy SEAL commander have once said: “if you want to change the world, start by making your bed, because once you’ve finished the first task of the day, you’ve have small sense of pride and it will lead you to another task. When you have waken up and completed one of the most tedious tasks, you are really setting a positive tone for the rest of the day. You’ve changed something already — a messy bed into a nicely made one. And by taking responsibility into your own hands and getting it done, and not live it to your wife or husband to do it for you. And if you have young kids, what a better way to set an example for them, and this is far more effective than yelling at them to get your point across.
I believe that self-discipline is a cornerstone to personal success, it is simply about choose to do the things you should be doing, rather than the things you want to do. You see, we all know that we should be exercising more often, eat more healthy food, read more books and so on. But we always have excuses and distractions for not doing them. We quit going to the gym after the initial enthusiasm fades away, and we get distracted by something else more interesting. All these trivial tasks that doesn’t seem to make difference on their own, but over the long term will make big impacts to your life, either positive or negative. Making bed everyday will improve your self-discipline, and remind you that you should not quit on a task or goal that can have positive impact in your life. When you join the military, guess what is one of the first tasks you are asked to do? Yes — making bed. This is the true for both eastern and western military. The easiest thing is easy to do, but it also easy not to do. The the actual task of making bed mat not be meaningful, but it teaches the discipline that no small task is too small and perfection and consistency is what we must achieve at all times.
When you make a conscious effort to attend to the small things you become an attention to detail person, which will positively impact your performance and leads to increased success. By focusing on the small things, you make incremental progress towards your goal, which leads to your long-term goal. If you want to be a good public speaker, you can’t ignore the smallest things such as facial expression, body language, stance, your tone, your eye contacts, your sense of humour and so on. By working on one of the these areas at a time, you’ll be feeling more happy and fulfilled, and on the other hand, if you only concentrate on the big goal, you could end up feeling deflated, disappointed and eventually give up.
For every small effort made, you can expect to get multiple returns. When German cyclist Tony Martin reached a peak in his personal performance, he started tweaking the small things in his personal routine, such as his nutrition, his sleep duration and even down to the level of his pillow’s firmness that could give him the best sleep. Eventually he went on to win 3 straight Tour de France titles. So small things can deliver big results when you pay attention to them and do them well.
I’d like to encourage you to write down 3 areas of your life that matters to you the most, and think about few smallest things that you can do to make a difference from day-to-day, and do it consistently. If your goal is to become fitter, it might not be a bad idea to take stairs instead elevator, and walk to southern cross instead of tramming. All these small things will eventually help to double, triple your results. You may not see any results in the short to medium term, but believe they will make a difference in the end. So keep it up.
