One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way

by Robert Maurer

Each employee in a kaizen culture is asked to look each day for ways to improve the process or product: lowering cost, increasing quality, and always—I repeat, always—in the service of the customer.

“What else can I do in one minute a day?”

building up the exercise habit minute by minute.

change helps the human mind circumnavigate the fear that blocks success and creativity.

large goal ➞ fear ➞ access to cortex restricted ➞ failure small goal ➞ fear bypassed ➞ cortex engaged ➞ success

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.

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

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?”

How can I get to my goal in one minute a day? At this rate, it’ll take years!

Resolution: Use time more productively. Small Steps:

Focusing on the small mistakes now can save us years of costly corrections.

Tt

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

They are absolutely focused in the moment, so able to take pleasure and be absorbed in their activities and their friends.

Good point

If you want to have more love in your life, perform a small, loving act each day for a friend, acquaintance, or stranger.

Kaizen invites us to see life as an opportunity for continuous improvement, for ever-higher standards and expanding potential.

What more important task does this life hold than to draw out the possibility in each moment?