Success and Dominoes

How do you simplify great success? How does that make sense in a much smaller frame? How do you break down Beethoven’s Symphony 9? It almost seems like an insult. It almost seems belittling. The ability to take something amazing and make it smaller when you know the enormity of what it is currently is a skill for sure.

Are you familiar with dominoes? Have you seen a super long line of dominoes fall down? It’s pretty awesome to watch. The setup is so long, and the fall down literally takes no time. It is effortless when it happens. It’s effortless like when you see a symphony orchestra play Beethoven. What is really sneaky about dominoes is the kinetic energy involved in this simple action. I never would have expected what I found out. When a domino falls it releases has enough energy to knock over a domino that is 1.5X its own size. So, in a very short time, the energy you have created can take down quite a tall domino. Check out the video above. You have to love this guy.

The compounding of energy is a great metaphor for hard work in our own lives. If you look at a simple task that you complete every day through a short term lens, it looks like just that. It looks super achievable, and actually not sexy at all, but the sum, the compounded expression of these tasks after a year, 5 years, or a decade, is something crazy. The key is the consistency. Each and every time, you show up. Each domino has to be in place to hit the next. One little miss and it all begins to fade away, but you connect some of those bad boys and the momentum and the skill go up a notch. What you start to see is something that is no longer a simple thing. You start to see mastery.

Great successes in life are not freak occurrences. Great successes in life are seen through a small window that is focused on the very top of a mountain of smaller successes. The well placed dominoes in your life, the simple tasks that you repeatedly do will make you what you become. Let’s make those tasks worthwhile ones. Make them something you can be proud of.

 

Danny Lesslie

@dannylesslie