One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way

by Robert Maurer

“Life’s most persistent and urgent question is: What are you doing for others?” —Martin Luther King Jr.

“I long to accomplish a great and noble task but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.” —Helen Keller

“Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.” —Albert Einstein

Don’t look for the big, quick improvement. Seek the small improvement one day at a time. That’s the only way it happens—and when it happens, it lasts.”

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

small goal ➞ fear bypassed ➞ cortex engaged ➞ success

Instead of spending years in counseling to understand why you’re afraid of looking great or achieving your professional goals,

Small actions (say, writing just three notes) satisfy your brain’s need to do something and soothe its distress. As

I noticed that when adults came to see a physician and talked about their emotional pain, they chose words such as stress, anxiety, depression, nervous, and tense. But when I observed children talking about their feelings, they talked about being scared, sad, or afraid.

This approach to fear is unproductive. If your expectation is that a well-run life should always be orderly, you are setting yourself up for panic and defeat.

But if you expect fear, you can approach it in a compassionate manner.

It helps to remember that when we want to change, rational thoughts don’t always guide actions, and fear can well up in the most ordinary of places.

“Can you think of a very small step you might take to improve our process or product?”

“What shapes our lives are the questions we ask, refuse to ask, or never think to ask.” —Sam Keen

The hippocampus’s main criterion for storage is repetition, so asking that question over and over gives the brain no choice

notice a child’s inattentiveness to didactic statements (“This is a doggie.”) compared to his widened eyes when you ask a question, even if you’re the one supplying the answer (“What’s this? This is a doggie.”). Parents intuitively know to ask questions,

If health were my first priority, what would I be doing differently today? What is one way I can remind myself to drink more water? How could I incorporate a few more minutes of exercise into my daily routine?

If health were my first priority, what would I be doing differently today? What is one way I can remind myself to drink more water? How could I incorporate a few more minutes of exercise into my daily routine?

By asking small, gentle questions, we keep the fight-or-flight response in the “off” position. Kaizen questions such as “What’s the smallest step I can take to be more efficient?” or “What can I do in five minutes a day to reduce my credit-card debt?” or “How could I find one source of information about adult education classes

Even if you’re not an aspiring novelist, small questions can help calm the fears that squelch creativity in other realms of life.

When you use a harsh or urgent tone with yourself, fear will clog the creative process.

What’s one thing I wish to contribute to the world with my book, poem, song, or painting? Whom could I ask for help or inspiration? What is special about my creative process/talents/business team? What type of work would excite and fulfill me? Remember: If you repeat the question over the course of several days or weeks—or for however long it takes—the hippocampus (the part of the brain that stores information) will have no choice but to address it. And in its own way, on its own timetable, the brain will begin giving you answers.

to spend two minutes a day asking herself: What would my ideal mate be like?

Again, she continued to ask herself the question until her brain started working overtime on the answers.

What kind of job could bring me pride and pleasure?

As you begin, remember that you are programming your brain for creativity, so choose a question and ask it repeatedly, over the course of several days or weeks. Instead of freezing up your brain with tall orders and angry demands, you’ll experience the productive output of a brain that is pleasantly challenged. If your goal is to come up with a creative breakthrough

Mind sculpture takes advantage of cutting-edge neuroscience, which suggests that the brain learns best not in large dramatic doses—Just do it!—but in very small increments, smaller than ever believed possible.

This small kaizen strategy is actually perfect for anyone who’s struggled and struggled to achieve a goal that remains out of reach. That’s because it’s such a safe, comfortable step to take that it allows you to walk right past any mental obstacles that have held you back.

respond calmly in an emotionally charged situation, instead of exploding with rage

Whatever you do repeatedly, even if for only a few seconds at a time, the brain decides must be important and so begins committing cells to the new behavior.

If you start making excuses for not practicing mind sculpture, or if you find yourself forgetting to do it, then you need to cut back on the amount of time.

As we’ve learned, radical programs for change can arouse your hidden and not-so-hidden doubts and fears (What if I fail? What if I achieve my goal—and I’m still unhappy?), setting off the amygdala’s alarms. Your brain responds to this fear with skyrocketing levels of stress hormones and lower levels of creativity instead of the positive, consistent energy you need to reach your long-term goals.

I’d rather they go home and meditate for one minute than not meditate for thirty minutes.

The small step made the larger one four times more likely. Other studies have borne out these results, showing that an initial small action (wearing a pin for a charity, watching a stranger’s belongings on the beach) wipes away most objections to a much greater action (making larger financial donations to the charity, interfering if the stranger’s belongings are stolen). Now imagine how efficiently small actions can break down your resistance to a change you really want to make!

During these early months, her small actions would have struck most people as ridiculous. But they weren’t, really. She was developing a tolerance for exercise. Soon her “ridiculous” small actions had grown into the firm habit of running one mile each day!

When the steps are easy enough, the mind will usually take over and leapfrog over obstacles to achieve your goal.

yourself: Isn’t slow change better than what I’ve experienced before . . . which is no change at all?

But one of the most solid predictors of success in life is whether a person turns to another human for support in times of trouble or fear.

I believe that the reason writing in a journal is so effective is that, for many people, it’s a pretty big deal to decide that your emotional life is valuable enough to commit to a book that no one else will ever see.

Let’s try to find a truly small, trivial-seeming step.

We are so accustomed to living with minor annoyances that it’s not always easy to identify them, let alone make corrections. But these annoyances have a way of acquiring mass and eventually blocking your path to change. By training yourself to spot and solve small problems, you can avoid undergoing much more painful remedies later.

Fixing a small problem on the scene prevented much bigger problems later.

Identify one small mistake you have made today, without becoming angry with yourself for making this mistake. This single act, especially if you perform it daily, will raise your awareness of small mistakes.

If you can peg the error to a larger issue, you’ll give yourself further incentive to work on it!

attention. Excellent studies have suggested that people who respond to life’s challenges with anger are seven times more likely to die prematurely from heart disease than those with the same lifestyle (including similar exercise and dietary habits) but different temperament.

“Confront the difficult while it is still easy; accomplish the great task by a series of small acts.” —Tao Te Ching

Angry or critical self-talk. By this I mean the internal voices that say, Why don’t you just give up? You’re never going to be smarter or richer or thinner, as discussed in the chapter “Ask Small Questions.” It’s a myth that this kind of harsh self-treatment will goad us into better performance. In reality, it stimulates the fight-or-flight response (discussed at the beginning of this book) and stops progress in its tracks. You can quiet these voices by bringing your awareness to them—and by taking the small steps of kaizen, which are designed to calm the stress associated with change.

When we face personal crises, the kaizen strategy of solving small problems offers consolation and practical assistance.

During these crises, the only concrete steps available are small ones. When our lives are in great distress, even while we are feeling out of control or in emotional pain, we can try to locate the smaller problems within the larger disaster, and perhaps apply any or all of the kaizen techniques to move us slowly in the direction of a solution. But if we are blind to the small, manageable problems, we are more likely to slip into despair.

The larger the external rewards, the greater the risk of inhibiting or stunting the native drive for excellence.