One Step At A Time | The Kaizen Method
A Simple Practice To Accomplish Big Things.
Good Change
Kaizen is a Japanese philosophy focusing on making small changes that accumulate over time to create big results. Do one until you can do two, and so on.
Kaizen And Habits.
Kaizen helps us consistently take small actions to create bigger changes. The Kaizen Change is similar to a river eroding a mountain, slow, but its consistency yields amazing results. We can use Kaizen in our lives to gradually make changes toward the goals we have and combat our harmful habits in the process.
Our Habits are the regular routines or behaviors that we subconsciously carry out, similar to autopilot. Habits can often cause us to take action with little effort. Habits help us offload the brains’ repetitive tasks and are responsible for a majority of our regular action.
Habits help get the most out of life or create tumrmoil in our life. It is crucial that we develop prodcutive and healthy habits that assist life rathe than sabatoage it. Unforoutnly habits can be ratehr tricky to devlop and even harfder to change once they set in. Think of habits like cement, they are easy to manipluete when fresh but over time they become ridged, making change difficult.
By Approaching Habits with the Kaizen Philosophy, you can begin to chip away at that concrete slowly and create big changes. Think of Kaizen as a slow moving river and your habits as The Mountain, over time your small changes will cut right through that Mountain.
Kaizen Is Natural Change
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“Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.”
As humans, we are wired to seek the path of least resistance; this “easy” approach often allows poor habits to take over our lives. Over time our poor habits become a burden until we choose to scramble and make immediate change. We will often try to aggressively correct bad habits, expecting a big change quickly, but this approach is unstable. Attempting to overpower a habit requires an immense amount of willpower, and our brain’s willpower is often not conditioned enough to power through the conditioning of Habits.
Habits develop through consistent reinforcement over time; your aggressive sporadic attempts to correct them only leave you mentally exhausted and allow the negative habits to slowly creep back, erasing all progress.
Habits are based on consistency. Nature is based on consistency. You are guided by the same natural laws as all other creatures.
Kaizen is Consistency.
The Kaizen philosophy helps us harmonize and rebalance our lives with nature through consistency.
Consistency vs Inconsistency
Your habits are the tortoise
The Hare is your attempt to change those habits immediately.
We all know the story: a consistent small step is better than a big, inconsistent leap.
Like the hare, exerting conscious effort to make changes will drain your energy, you will need to rest, and the tortoise will catch you. Everytime.
How To Use Kaizen
By Using Kaizen, we can begin to beat habits at their own game, consistency. Kaizen will beat your habits every time because it will become a habit all on its own.
You must remember that there is no speedometer on progress; all forward movement is forward movement. Taking a small step daily will get you closer to your goal every time.
Steps Of Kaizen
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Identify your Goal
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Break down goal into tiny steps.
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Accomplish sub-goal.
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Increase load (by a small amount) after two weeks of 100% consistency.
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Repeat breaking down and completing sub-goals until you achieve your goal.
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When you fail, split the previous step in half and return to Step 3.
What is the smallest possible “thing” that will result in positive growth?
Example:
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Goal: Complete a 5k run in 3 months.
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Sub-Goal: Run 1 mile once a week.
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Day 15: Increase by half-mile to 2.4k
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Day 30: Increase by half mile to 3.2k
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Day 45: Increase by half mile to 4k
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Day 60. Increase by half mile 4.8k
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Day 75: Increase by half mile 5.6k
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Day 90: Increase by half mile to 6.6k
After three months of this consistent running, you would have worked past the 5k goal with just one day of action a week.
With Kaizen, you can change any of the variables to accomplish your small goals; time, Duration, Amount, etc., can all be adjusted as needed to ensure that you can accomplish your small steps.
It is important that you don’t alter your goals and respect your requirements during each attempt at Kaizen.
If You Want To…
Write a book? Write one sentence twice a week.
Start working out? Do one push-up once a day when you wake up or before you go to bed.
Read more books? Read for minutes every other day.
Eat healthier? Replace junk food once a week with a healthy alternative.
Improve relationships? Attempt to connect once every two weeks with a loved one.
Do this for a month if you have to until it becomes second nature—until you no longer have to think about it. Then, when it becomes second nature, add another sentence, add one more day, add another push-up, and repeat until it’s just what you do.
Kaizen is about SLOW CONSITENCY. Small changes over time will always lead to big results. Take your time and be Patient.