“This powerful, practical book, based on years of proven and profitable experience, shows you how to leverage your special talents to maximize the opportunities surrounding you. The Compound Effect is a treasure chest of ideas for achieving greater success than you ever thought possible!” —Brian Tracy, speaker and author of *The Way to Wealth* “A brilliant formula for living an extraordinary life. Read it, and most important, take action upon it!” —Jack Canfield, co-author of *The Success Principles: How to Get from* *Where You Are to Where You Want to Be* “Darren Hardy has written a new bible for the self-improvement space.
If you are looking for the real deal—a real program, with real tools that can change your life and make your dreams a reality—The Compound Effect is it! I plan to use this book to go back and look at what I need to again work on in my own life! Buy ten copies, one for yourself and nine more for those you love, and pass them out now—those who get it will thank you! —David Bach, founder of FinishRich.com and author of eight New York Times best-sellers, including *The Automatic Millionaire* “This book will enable you to climb the ladder of success two steps at a time.
Buy it, read it, and bank it.” —Jeffrey Gitomer, author of *The Sales Bible* and *The Little Red Book of* *Selling* “Darren Hardy is in a unique position to aggregate the brainpower of the most successful people in the world and boil it down to what really matters. Simple, direct, and to the point—these are the principles that have guided my life and every top business leader I know. This book will show you the way to your own greater success, happiness, and fulfillment.”
—Chris Widener, speaker and author of *The Art of Influence: Persuading* *Others Begins with You and The Twelve Pillars* “Darren Hardy proves with *The Compound Effect* that common sense—when applied—yields amazingly uncommon results. Follow these simple steps and become who you were meant to be!”
—Denis Waitley, speaker and author of *The Psychology of Winning* “*The Compound Effect* will help you beat the competition, rise above your challenges, and create the life you deserve!”
—T. Harv Eker, author of the No. 1 New York Times best-seller *Secrets of* *the Millionaire Mind* “Einstein said, ‘Compounding is the eighth wonder of the world.’ To compound your successes, read, apprehend, comprehend, and fully use my friend Darren Hardy’s brilliance to realize all your dreams, hopes, and desires.”
—Mark Victor Hansen, co-creator of the No. 1 New York Times best- selling series *Chicken Soup for the Soul* and co-author of *The One Minute* *Millionaire* “People who talk about ‘success’ but don’t find ways to translate it into their personal lives—into their relationships and their marriages and their families— do not win my respect or my admiration. In fact, their words ring hollow. As long as we have known Darren Hardy, we have never had a conversation where we have not talked about our kids, about our wives, and about how our families are doing. We think Darren knows a lot about achieving success, and even more important, he wants people to achieve it for the right reasons!”
**WARNING!**
These chapter headings look simple. Success strategies are no longer a secret, but most people ignore them. You think you already know the secret to success? So does everyone else. But the six strategies within this book, when applied in sequence, will launch your income, your life—your success—like nothing before. As the publisher of *SUCCESS* magazine, I’ve seen it all. Nothing works like the power of the **Compound Effect** of simple actions done right over time. This is it, the real deal on what it takes to achieve massive success in your life. Whatever your dream, desire, or goal in life, the plan to achieve it all is found in the book you’re holding.
Read on, and let it rock your world. I extend my appreciation and thanks to my team at SUCCESS Media and *SUCCESS* magazine, who have supported me through this labor of blood, sweat, and almost tears, particularly my good friends and colleagues Reed Bilbray and Stuart Johnson… To my writing muse and collaborator, Linda Sivertsen, who helped pull out the stories and references from my past and give my process order and coherence… To the editing wizardry of Erin Casey, the always-genius touch of our *SUCCESS* magazine editor Lisa Ocker, and to our editor in chief, Deborah Heisz… To the many brilliant personal-development experts I have worked with and learned from over the past two decades—all the CEOs, revolutionary entrepreneurs, and extraordinary achievers I have had the chance to interview and glean new insights, ideas, and wisdom from…
The private diaries of one of Rome’s greatest emperors, the personal letters of one of Rome’s best playwrights and wisest power brokers, the lectures of a former slave and exile, turned influential teacher. Against all odds and the passing of some two millennia, these incredible documents survive. What do they say? Could these ancient and obscure pages really contain anything relevant to modern life? The answer, it turns out, is yes.
They contain some of the greatest wisdom in the history of the world. Together these documents constitute the bedrock of what is known as Stoicism, an ancient philosophy that was once one of the most popular civic disciplines in the West, practiced by the rich and the impoverished, the powerful and the struggling alike in the pursuit of the Good Life. But over the centuries, knowledge of this way of thinking, once essential to so many, slowly faded from view. Except to the most avid seekers of wisdom, Stoicism is either unknown or misunderstood. Indeed, it would be hard to find a word dealt a greater injustice at the hands of the English language than “Stoic.”
To the average person, this vibrant, action-oriented, and paradigm-shifting way of living has become shorthand for “emotionless.” Given the fact that the mere mention of philosophy makes most nervous or bored, “Stoic philosophy” on the surface sounds like the last thing anyone would want to learn about, let alone urgently need in the course of daily life. What a sad fate for a philosophy that even one of its occasional critics, Arthur Schopenhauer, would describe as “the highest point to which man can attain by the mere use of his faculty of reason.”
Our goal with this book is to restore Stoicism to its rightful place as a tool in the pursuit of self- mastery, perseverance, and wisdom: something one uses to live a great life, rather than some esoteric field of academic inquiry. Certainly, many of history’s great minds not only understood Stoicism for what it truly is, they sought it out: George Washington, Walt Whitman, Frederick the Great, Eugène Delacroix, Adam Smith, Immanuel Kant,