Creating a success momentum in life

Posted on May 14, 2015 by Vivek Slaria, One of Thousands of Executive Coaches on Noomii.

Creating a fly wheel effect in Life
Juhu beach on a Saturday evening is a mela (festival). Tiny bright lights dot the sea front, attracting customers to everything from Mumbai bhel to electronics. Children run all over the beach front. Their enthusiastic shrieks fill the air. Young couples, old men and everyone in between comes together in this festival of life.
In the midst of this melee I see a giant flywheel. I remember taking rides on it when I was young. It was manual, which meant people would physically rotate it around its axis. I sit down and observe the giant wheel. A brown baked, lean man in the early fifties is manning it. Meet Kishan.
A bunch of kids surround him with five rupee coins for a ride. He has two assistants to help him. One pushes the flywheel and the other closes the door as a cart fills. The entire cart is now full. All three of them then use their entire strength for rotating the wheel. It does not move. An assistant climbs from a side rail to a higher cart and applies force from this point. Slowly the wheel starts moving. The children inside clamour for speed. The second assistant also joins him and pushes with more force. The giant fly wheel slowly starts rotating. One round, then the second and the third. Gradually it catches pace. Soon the wheel is spinning with full force. The voices inside now shriek with joy.
As the wheel catches speed, the assistant reduces force. The weight of the wheel is spinning it onward. This is the flywheel effect.
Jim Collins in his famous book ‘Good to Great’ also writes about the flywheel effect. “No matter how dramatic the end result, the good to great transformation (of companies) never happened in a single fell swoop. There was no single defining action, no grand program … the process resembled pushing one giant heavy fly wheel in one direction, turn by turn building momentum until the point of break through and beyond”
Wouldn’t it be great if we could create a similar fly wheel effect in our personal lives? True, there will be effort involved in getting the wheel started. Once that is done though, the momentum itself will carry us forward to our goals.
This helps create a flywheel in life, also called the success momentum.
First know that no single transforming moment starts a flywheel. It is slow, steady and persistent effort that makes the wheel spin. Let’s stop looking for the magic bullet.
Next, it is important to start. Like a mountain climber, it may be okay to look at the peak in the beginning. Once the climb starts, the focus shifts to the next immediate grip. Each of these grips slowly adds up and takes a mountaineer to the top. Tiny habits are that single next grip. It is important to continuously keep executing them and not be bothered about the distance, progress or feedback. Continue taking the next grip and then the next to the top.
As each tiny habit becomes ingrained, add the next one to it. Let them build on each other.
Each tiny habit is like a workout of the willpower muscle. As the willpower muscle gets strengthened, the effects start showing in all areas of life.
Let me share an example. Amit started with a single tiny habit. After I wake up in the morning I will drink a glass of water and lemon and say ‘’awesome’’. Simple enough. He kept doing this for a week. Then he added another one. After I open my eyes, I will thank god for a fantastic day ahead and say ‘’awesome’’. He continued doing this.
His mornings started becoming positive and healthy. He added another habit- after I enter a meeting room I will take a deep breath. This helped him remain calm and focussed at work. The wheel was slowly moving. Soon what was normally a stressful day became calmer. The urge for smoking naturally went down. He quit his seventeen years of addiction and has stayed clean for more than a year now.
There are a few barriers to creating the momentum though. The first is a tendency to over intellectualize and complicate a simple concept. Avoid this trap. Start. The first step is the most important.
The second barrier is a lack of belief in oneself and uncertainty about what one wants. Like a self-fulfilling prophecy, the lack of belief will make sure it doesn’t happen, leaving us where we started. Believe that it is possible and it will be possible.
In the end let me leave you with these famous words from Henry Ford “Whether you believe you can or you can’t- you are right”
Know that the world is limitless. Take the first step.