Success Through A Positive Mental Attitude Principle Three - Going The Extra Mile

One day in the not-so-distant past, I was whining to my AA sponsor about my job, going into gory detail how there was no opportunity there and that I’d never get a raise and they just don’t appreciate me and I’m so much better than them and they just don’t understand me and how they just won’t give me a chance and how it’s not what I want to be doing with my life, he told me that he had discovered the secret to success in work a long time ago. I finally shut my mouth long enough to listen.

He told me:

“Show up 5 minutes early, leave 5 minutes late, and do more than you are paid for.”

I saw the value in it… but it’s not what I wanted to hear. I wanted to learn about manipulation, about negotiation, about leveraging my knowledge into cash.

I didn’t realize it then, but he was talking about Going the Extra Mile.

An Example From The Book

This is covered by Hill and Stone in Success Through a Positive Mental Attitude in the chapter “…And Something More” with a story about Alexander Graham Bell, the invention of the telephone, and how Bell was given the patent by the US Supreme court because he had added a single quarter turn of a screw to his invention. I bet you’ve heard of Bell, but do you know the name of the person who challenged him according to the book? (Five bucks via PayPal to the first commenter with the correct answer!)

This person’s name isn’t a household word like Bell’s because he didn’t do that something more… he didn’t go the extra mile.

How To Implement This

Just do a little extra in all that you do.

If you are picking up your spouse’s dry cleaning, grab her a Frappuccino from Starbucks (or something else she would enjoy) on the way home.

If you’ve committed to writing for fifteen minutes, write for sixteen.

If you’re in the middle of running a mile, push yourself a bit and run one and a half.

If you were planning giving 5% of your income to a worthy cause, give 6%.

If you charged a client for an hour, spend an hour and fifteen minutes with them.

Just add a little more. You don’t have to go an extra ten miles. Just a little bit more will do.

Compensation

You will be more than compensated for the extra effort you put in. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. And you may not see just where the compensation comes from… but it’ll be there.

The people that you go the extra mile for may not be the one’s who reciprocate… but it will be reciprocated. Call it Karma, call it The Law of Attraction, call it reaping what you sow… but you will be compensated for every little bit of extra effort you put in.

In your business, customers will be beating down your door, waving money at you, because the word will spread that you are the one who gives more than was promised, rather than the one who tries to get by with minimal effort.

When a new position opens up at work, you’ll be the one your managers think of because you took that little extra time with a client.

And when you bring home that Frappuccino… well, let’s just say that you’ll get more than you paid for.

I think Wayne Dyer said it best:

“It’s never crowded along the extra mile.”

Personally, I’ve never liked crowds much anyway.

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