8,388,608 is My New Favorite Number

Intro Music:
Welcome to An Owner’s Guide for Your Life, the podcast that combines psychology, coaching, common sense and fun. I’m Tracey Browning, an entrepreneur, life coach, and lover of people. Now let’s talk about how to live, love, make money, and change the world.

Tracey:
Hey, I’m glad you’re here.
I’ve got a number for you: 8,388,608. That is my new favorite number.
And I’ll tell you why in a minute.

First, I want to ask you something. Have you ever felt small? Alone? Like, why do I even bother? Why do I do what I do? Why should I care about, why do I care about the things I care about? It’s ridiculous thinking, “Maybe I can change the world.” Be the change, huh? I’m only one person. It doesn’t really matter. I don’t really matter.

Well, those are a lot of questions, I know, and I just said, let me ask you one. But anyway, maybe you haven’t felt like that, but I sure have.

Some days, my predominant overwhelming, like tsunami wave of feeling is, “Why do I even bother?” Other days, that thought just sails through my brain a time or two, and I’m fine. But other days, man, I just think, why bother? I don’t matter.

That is not the thought that I want fueling my life. And if you’re listening to this, it’s probably not the thought that you want to fuel your own life because it’s pretty crappy fuel.

We want to be strong, smart, powerful owners of our lives. We’re not the”Why bother? We don’t matter” kind of people, right? But that thought, it still lingers. It’s like the smell of rotten eggs. It’s just hanging out, kind of making your stomach churn. It’s atrocious.

So let’s do some math.
You probably thought I was going to hit you with some uplifting quote, but no, we’re doing math, baby. Buckle up. Here comes the math.

There’s a mathematical concept called exponential growth, and I feel qualified to explain it to you in my own terms because I was one of the top students in my doctoral statistics class. Even though I have trouble saying statistics, I was like a high level student. I kicked statistical butt. Look, that just rolled off my tongue right there. Anyway, I digress.

Exponential growth. That’s what we’re talking about. Now, I want to warn you, our brains have trouble wrapping around this idea of exponential growth because linear growth feels very natural, like little orderly bits of growth at a time. So just be warned, your brain is going to say, Ohhh, that’s not how it works.” So just tell your brain to chill out. Prepare to be amazed while we think about exponential growth.

Now, exponential growth is really just a fancy term for “double it”.
See how simple I can make math?
Look at that. Double it.

I want you to imagine yourself sitting beside a pond. That pond is crystal clear. It’s beautiful. It’s peaceful. Let’s throw in some little birds chirping along and you hear little frogs, “ribbet, ribbet”. And there’s one little lily pad. It’s just floating there, close to the edge. Only one lily pad on the whole pond.

Every hour that lily pad is going to “double it”. So we start with one lily pad and in the next hour, I’m going to have two lily pads. The third hour those two lily pads are going to “double it”. And there’ll be four. Next hour, four lily pads, “double it”. And there are eight. So you get the idea. See, easy peasy.

Now, it doesn’t look like much 7 hours in. We’re up to 64 lily pads, which, really, yes, that’s a bunch of lily pads. But we’ve got a whole lot of pond that’s still uncovered. Water, water everywhere. A whole lot.

Exponential growth at the beginning feels kind of slow. But hold on to your hat.
On our 11th hour, we hit four digits: 1024 lily pads.
Four hours after that, we’re in five digits: 16,384 lily pads.
We hit a million lily pads plus on our 21st hour.
And on the 24th hour, we will have 8,388,608 lily pads.

That number ring a bell? Yeah, it’s my new favorite number.
Now, it’s not that I’ve got a thing for lily pads. That’s not it at all.

There are 24 hours in a day. And let’s start with you.
You are one person.
Take your one action and do it.
Smile at one person.
Say something kind.
Make the sales offer.
Do something gutsy, bold, brave.
Inspire yourself, inspire somebody else.
Do that ONE thing, whatever that one thing is- you’ve probably got a one thing in mind.

Do that one thing, and you will ripple out.

Ah, my friends, the possibilities of your ripple.
They’re just unbelievable to our brain because we think, “Oh, it’s just me. It’s only one thing. Why do I matter?”

But you’ve just seen what exponential growth looks like.
Your brain will tell you it won’t work, but we just did the math.
It works.

So quit playing small.
Stop hiding.
Promise yourself you won’t run from doing the one thing, whatever it is.

Your one thing. If exponential growth worked perfectly in the real world, your one thing will turn into 8,388,608 in 24 hours.

You could touch 8,388,608 lives in 24 hours if exponential growth worked perfectly.
If it only worked at 50%, well, that’s only 4,194,304.
If it only worked at 10% power, that’s 838,861.

That’s a lot of lives that can be impacted, indirectly, but impacted by you.

YOU, one person, taking one action.

So I hope that 8,388,608 is your new favorite number, too.

For a transcript of this episode or for more information about life and mindset coaching, visit my website https://www.tbrowning.com/.