One Small Step Can Change Your Life

How do people succeed?
How do successful people stay successful?

While there are as many ways to success as there are successful people, Robert Maurer in “The Kaizen Way” suggests that there is one unusual method many/most use. Same method works for change — coming out of an addiction, improving a career, exercising.

When people want to change, they usually turn first to the strategy of a drastic process of change. New diet. Austerity plans. Jumping into risky social situations to conquer shyness. Many people are crippled by the belief that this is the only way to change! Many might have tried this approach and failed.

Radical change is like charging up a steep hill — you may run out of win before you reach the crest, or the thought of all the work ahead makes you give up no sooner than you begin. There is an alternative. Another path, one that winds so gently up the hill that you hardly notice the climb. All it requires is that you place one foot in front of the other.

This alternative strategy for change is called Kaizen.

Kaizen has it’s roots in Post War 1940’s Americas. A training conducted asked for Managers to look for continuous improvements. Hundreds of small things that can be improved. Seeking the small improvement one day at a time. However, US companies ignored this once manufacturing improved. In Japan (introduced post War), it became part of their business culture. They even named it Kaizen!

Kaizen vs Innovation: They are two major strategies people use to create change. Where innovation demands shocking and radical reform, all Kaizen asks is that you take small, comfortable steps toward improvement.

Whether Kaizen had a place as a strategy not just for simple profit, but for the expansion of behavioural, cognitive, and even spiritual potential?

Among other health issues, Julie was 30 pounds overweight. She needed regular physical activity. One can advice her — Go jogging! Ride a bike. Rent an aerobics video.

And she may respond — “How am I going to find time to work out? You don’t understand me at all!” What could one do to break this sad cycle?

“How about if you just march in place in front of the TV, each day, for one minute?” Julie — “I could give that a try!” For her next visit, you might even see here animated, with less resistance in her speech and demeanor. “What else can I do in one minute a day?”

Can you try these?

asking small questions to dispel fear and inspire creativity?
thinking small thoughts to develop new skills and habits — without moving a muscle
taking small actions that guarantee success
solving small problems, even when you’re faced with an overwhelming crisis
bestowing small rewards to yourself or others to produce the best results
recognizing the small but crucial moments that everyone else ignores

Why Kaizen Works?

All changes, even positive ones, are scary. This human fact is unavoidable. This fear can prevent creativity, change and success. Attempts to reach goals through radical or revolutionary means often fail because they heighten fear. But the small steps of Kaizen disarm the brain’s fear response, stimulating rational thought and creative play.

Our brain can set off alarm bells whenever we want to make a departure from our usual, safe routines. In such cases, our thinking part of the brain, is restricted, and sometimes shutdown!

Some lucky people are able to turn their fear into another emotion: excitement. You probably know a few people like this.

The little steps of kaizen are a kind of stealthy solution to this quality of the brain. As your small steps continue and your cortex starts working, the brain begins to create “software” for your desired change, actually laying down new nerve pathways and building new habits. Soon your resistance to change begins to weaken.

Stress … of Fear?

For countless generations — “fear” was enough. Modern medical name is “stress.” When adults see a physician and talk about their emotional pain, they chose words like stress, anxiety, depression, nervous and tense. But when children talk about their feelings, they talk about being scared, sad, or afraid.

The reason? May be less to do with symptoms and more to do with expectations. Children assumed their feelings were normal. Children know they live in a world they cannot control. They understand that fear is part of their lives. Adults believe if they are living correctly, they can control the events around them. When fear does appear — it seems all wrong — so adults prefer to call it by the names for psychiatric disease. Fear becomes a disorder, something to put in a box with a tidy label of “stress” or “anxiety.”

This approach to fear is unproductive. If you are expecting a well-run life (orderly), you are setting yourself up for panic and defeat. If you assume that a new job or relationship or health goal is supposed to be easy, you will feel angry and confused when fear arises — and you’ll do anything to make it disappear. We take disparate measures to get rid of the fear.

Like a drunk searching for his lost keys in a place light is better. When life gets scary and difficult, we tend to look for solutions in places where it is easy or at least familiar to do so, and not in the dark, uncomfortable places where real solutions might lie.

Ask Small Questions

One of the most powerful ways to “program” your brain is the kaizen technique of asking small questions. Instead of “What is each of you going to do to make our company the best in the industry?”, try “Can you think of a very small step you might take to improve our product or process?”

What shapes our lives are the questions we ask, refuse to ask, or never think to ask.

Try this. Ask your friend the color of car parked next to her’s? By fourth or fifth day, she may begin to start noticing. Thanks to her hippocampus in the brain whose main criteria for storage is repetition. So asking that question over and over gives the brain no choice but to pay attention and begin to create answers.

Questions like this (What is the color?) turn out to be more productive and useful for shaping ideas and solutions than commands (Tell me the color). Questions are simply better at engaging the brain. A question wakes up your brain and delights it.

Parents of very young children intuitively know to ask questions, then answer them, then ask again and see if the child can recall. “What is this? This is a doggie. What is this?”

Patients have much better success in meeting health guidelines if they pose kaizen questions to themselves. Instead of “Exercise regularly,” can I ask “How could I incorporate a few more minutes of exercise in my daily routine?” There can be dramatically different effects between asking questions and issuing commands. After asking these questions for few days, patients start to come up with creative ways to incorporate good habits into their routines.

Tip-toe past fear

Your brain loves questions and won’t reject them unless … the question is so big it triggers fear. How am I going to get thin (or rich, or married)? What new products will bring in a million more dollars for the company? Such questions are awfully big and frightening. Instead of responding with playfulness, our brain, sensing the fear, suppresses creativity and shuts down access to the thinking part of the brain, when we need it most. A strength — ability to lock-down in times of danger — becomes a crippling liability here.

By asking small, gentle questions, with a patient spirit, we keep the fight-or-flight response in the “Off” mode. They allow the brain to focus on problem solving, and eventually, action. Ask the question often enough, your brain eventually generates interesting responses.

Writer’s Block is actually fear. Kaizen can help you here!

Negative Questions: A Toxic Mental Brew

The power of questions to shape experience and behavior is not limited to dynamic productive applications. There can be painful, harsh questions too.

Why am I such a loser?
How could I be so stupid?

These questions also have the power to engage the brain, shining a merciless, white-hot light on flaws and mistakes — real, imaginary, exaggerated. They spark intellectual energy, but that energy is used to churn weakness and emphasise inadequacies.

If you tend to berate with negative questions, try asking “What is one thing I like about myself today?” Ask this question daily, writing your answer down in a journal you keep in a specially designated place.

A Few Ideas

If you are unhappy but aren’t sure why, try asking yourself this: If I were guaranteed not to fail, what would I be doing differently? The question’s whimsical quality makes it safe for the brain to answer truthfully, and it can produce some surprising answers that lend clarity to your goals.
If you are trying to reach a specific goal, ask yourself every day: What is one small step I could take toward reaching my goal? Please take a kind tone with yourself, the same you’d use for a beloved friend.
Often we focus our attention on the people we think are most “important” — a key employee, the problem child, or our mate, leading us to ignore others who may have valuable insights for us. Try asking yourself: Is there a person at work or in my personal life whose voice and input I haven’t heard in a long time? What small question could I ask this person?
If you have a festering conflict with one person, ask yourself: What’s one good thing about this person?

Think Small Thoughts

The easy technique of mind sculpture uses “small thoughts” to help you develop new social, mental, and even physical skills — just by imagining yourself performing them.

Isolate a task either that you are afraid to do or that makes you uncomfortable.
Allot seconds, not minutes, for this task, daily.
When you are ready to practice mind sculpture, sit or lie down in a quiet, comfortable spot and close your eyes.
Imagine you are in that difficult or uncomfortable situation and looking around you through your own eyes. What do you see? What is the setting? Who’s there? What do they look like? See the expressions on their faces, the clothes they are wearing, their posture.
Now expand your imagination to the rest of your senses. What are the sounds and smells and flavors and textures around you?
Without moving an actual muscle, imagine that you are performing the task. What are the words you use? What does your voice sound like and how does it resonate through your body? What are your physical gestures?
Imagine a positive response to your activity.

If you want to learn portion control, imagine yourself at the table. See a plate in front of you with food remaining on it. What does the food look like? How does it smell and taste? Now imagine putting down your utensil, even though some food remains on the plate. How does the utensil sound as it meets the plate? Pick up your napkin from your lap and note its texture. Put the napkin down and hear your chair and feel your push back from the table. Imagine yourself getting up and effortlessly walking away.

If you’d like to repair a ruptured personal relationship, first think of one thing the other person does to push your buttons, leading you to overreact or to avoid that person. Now picture that person performing the irritating behavior and imagine yourself responding in a manner you’d find ideal. How would your body feel? Would it cool down instead of heating up? What would you like to say and in which tone of voice? What posture would you like to assume?

Take Small Actions

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Solve Small Problems

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Small Rewards

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Small But Crucial Moments

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