The Secret of the Magic Penny

Dawn Damon 0:07

Hey beautiful women. This is Dawn Damon the brave heart mentor and you're listening to the brave hearted woman. This is a podcast designed to help you find your brave so you can live out your beautiful vision. I have been working with women for years. And now I want to help you too. I'm here to awaken the brave heart inside of you so you can ignite the flame of your vision. You can reach your goals and achieve your dreams. Come on this get brave.

Hey there brave hearts. How you doing today? Hope you're doing well. This is Dawn Damon, your brave heart mentor. And today it's just so good to be with you. I want to share with you a couple of thoughts about the magic penny. Have you ever heard the magic Penny story? Well, I'm going to share that with you today. Now, I want to let you know that I heard about this a long time ago, but I was recently listening to a podcast that I enjoy. And Terry Savelle was talking about the magic penny. Well, it reminded me of when I read this very story in a book by Jeff Olson cold called the slight edge. And it's so good. I like to share with you about books that I've read. But of course my favorite books are the books that I've written. So if you don't have any of my books, make sure you stop by amazon.com and see Don Scott Damon, there are my books, I have the freedom challenge for women. I have the freedom challenge for men and other books there for you. And I'm working on my latest book right now I can't wait to tell you about it. But that's in the days ahead. So if I offered you $3 million, or a magic penny that doubles every day for 31 days, which would you choose? Well, let's say that you choose the penny, but you have a friend who chooses the $3 million. Okay, so on the first few days, your penny looks like it was a dismal choice. It doesn't look magic at all. And on day 10 you only have $5 Meanwhile, your girlfriend is gloating over her $3 million. She's thinking you blew it on day 20 you have $5,000.20 days into this. And on day 29 you have $2.9 million. You don't yet have the $3 million that your friend has been hanging on to for the past 29 days. But on day 30 Guess what? You you overcome your friend and you now have $5.3 million held on day 31 you blow them away. You've got $10,000,737 and like 24 cents yet $10.7 million.

And in the meantime, your friend only has only $3 million. That magic Penny is worth over $10 million. And you stuck with it and you made the right choice. And that's what I want to talk to you today. It's about the magic of sticking with something start where you are. How consistent are you? Do you give up easily? Or do you stay with what you got small steps? start something. Somebody when they heard that story. They said man that's so amazing how you can start with nothing and end up with $10 million. And the author of the book, Jeff Olson stops him and says Well, no, no, you didn't start with nothing. You started with a penny. Yeah, yeah, I know. But it's basically nothing. He said no, it's a penny. If you have nothing and nothing doubles every day, you still have nothing. But if you have a penny and it doubles every day. Now that's something and that's what you have. You don't have nothing. You have something. You have the seed of an idea. You have one pushup. You have two setups. You have one meal, you can plan in advance. You have one chapter of a book That you can read, you have one drawer in a dresser that you can clean out. And eventually, you will see when you stick to it, how the compound interest or compound impact of your habits over time, make all the difference in your life. tiny things doubled. Increase, don't despise the day of small beginnings do the small stuff. Because it does add up over time, let me tell you a little story about myself. Sometimes I can be a little bit messy. So if I'm tired at night, when I take off my clothes, I don't always hang him up. If I take off my earrings, I have a hearing tree, it's actually very large, because I have over 30 pair 40 pair of earrings. And at night, if I take them off, if I don't put them up, I just put them on my dresser. Well, sometimes, I'll be honest, I get in a bad habit of just taking them off and setting them on my dresser. And before long, I'll look at that. And I'll say, Boy, I've got 20 pair of earrings just sitting here, Don, you need to apply the knowledge that you know, see what happens when you don't do the small things. When you don't do the small things. Pretty soon it becomes a big thing. Now I'm looking at a messy closet, if I would have just done the right thing each night, in the morning, I would have awakened. But what I do then is I say, Okay, I don't have time right now, to sit in this closet and clean it. But what I am going to do, I'm going to reboot, and I am going to hang up my earrings and put away my shoes, and I'm going to put away and hang up my clothes. And I'm gonna do a little bit every day until I get it done. And it looks at times like a mountain, am I being too vulnerable? Well, it's the truth at you know, and that's the creative side, I'm going to blame it on the creative side of me. Because sometimes that that creative part of my brain, that right side of my brain, it just, it just takes me places. But that's why discipline so important for me, and why I love creating habits, because my habits helped me stay on track. Even when I don't feel like it, I can default to something that I've just put in my life that I just do every day. Unfortunately, hanging up my clothes is not one of those habits that I have yet, but I'm going to get there. But here's what I do. Over time, I look and I have a clean closet. And now I'm developing the habit of saying it's a small thing. easy to do. The problem is, it's easy not to do. And that's the thing with a slight edge. You're either going forward, or you're going backward. You see three setups a night can turn into four, the next night or five the next week. 678 later on in the week. Pretty soon you can do seven setups a day. And seven times seven, you've got 49 setups you did this week. But what if you didn't do any? You've got nothing. You see, if you double nothing, you still have nothing but 49 setups a week times four weeks. Now you just did 196 setups in a month. That's beautiful, right? Small starts small things easy things, reading two chapters a week can turn into one book every two months, or six books a year. How many books did you read last year? You say, Well, I don't have time to read a book. Well, but do you have time to read a paragraph? If you read a couple paragraphs, that's a chapter a you read a couple of chapters, that's a book. And at the end of the year, you say, wow, I read six books this past year, I think I can do seven this coming up. You're easy to do, but easy not to do. Sometimes we don't do the things that we should. And when we don't then we say Ooh, slight edge is working only it's working in reverse was easy to do one or two push ups a day or some setups or do 10 minutes on the treadmill or the dreadmill you might call it it's easy to do a few minutes. It's easy not to do. It's easy to just say no to one dessert, but it's also easy not to and then at the end of the month you might look and say wow, the slight edge going backwards. I gained weight. I lost knowledge. I wasn't sharp on that test because I didn't study. I didn't stay in my budget. I don't have any money in my savings $1 in my savings over 30 days. $30.02 months later, $60.04 months, I got $120. But the person who put nothing, they have nothing. And maybe they even spent more than they should. And now I've got to take a withdrawal. So I even have less money. So you get to determine how you want to go through life, would you choose the magic Penny? Would you choose the principle to say that if I do something small every day that I could actually increase? Well, that's the principle of the slight edge small things incrementally over time, the little choices we make, that might seem insignificant on a daily basis. But they're actually the key to living a life that's full of success, and optimized health and amazing relationships. Success in every area of life is all about making the right choices and making them consistently day in and day out, until you reach your desired outcome. And, of course, when no one's around making the same good choices when no one's around, that's called integrity. But guess what, it's not a secret. Because our life choices are a direct, direct reflection of our life, I don't have to guess about how disciplined you are, I can just look at your bank book, or I can look at your body or I can look at your relationships, and you can look at mine, you don't have to guess if I'm doing the right thing. We can look at one another's lives. And that's not to be harsh. But that is to be brave. Because if we don't like what we see, we can take a closer look at those small daily decisions and make some adjustments. I believe that it was john Maxwell, who said the secret to your success is found in something you do every day. So again, there is no standing still in life. That's the slight edge. It's either working for you, or it's working against you. And not only is the slight edge working for you, or working against you, so is your mindset about life. Because your mindset, plus your discipline or intentionality, equals results. It was Abraham Lincoln who said this, if I have six hours to cut down a tree, I'm going to start the first four hours with sharpening my axe. In other words, right? I'm going to do the smart stuff, I'm going to do that taking the necessary steps so that the work becomes easy. If I have a project to do. It's the same principle of how do I eat an elephant, one bite at a time. I don't want to be miserable. I don't want to be average, I don't want to be blast a fair in life. But that's what that's what happens if you don't want to apply the slight edge principle. So many people go through life, they don't read a book, they don't make smart eating choices. They don't save any money. They don't wake up early, they don't have a morning routine. They watch too much TV. And at the end of the year they look and they say I had New Year's resolutions. You know, exercise more, eat less love God more be kind mean, but nothing specific. no specific goals, no measurable goals. I just want to be a good person.

So friends, how about you? Do you have what it takes? Have you accepted the magic Penny? Can you bring your life into the right direction, the right direction by fostering the right attitude. So knowing that your philosophy that creates feelings and emotions and that creates actions, I have the right philosophy, I have a growth mindset. I can do what I put my mind to do.

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Thanks for hanging out with me today and becoming brave. If this has helped you be sure to share it with someone and subscribe so you never have to miss another episode. For more about me my books, my coaching or online courses, visit Dawn damon.com. And as always be brave and live your vision