One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way

by Robert Maurer

Mind sculpture, developed by Ian Robertson, is a newer technique that involves total but still-imaginary sensory immersion. It requires its practitioners to pretend that they are actually engaged in the action, not just seeing but hearing, tasting, smelling, and touching. In mind sculpture, people imagine the movement of their muscles, and the rise and fall of their emotions.

Mind sculpture

My favorite example of effective mind sculpture comes from the extraordinary Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps. With twenty-two medals—eighteen of them gold—Phelps is the most decorated athlete in Olympic history.

Phelps

Kaizen Technique A Mind Sculpture How-To

Ref to details

Kaizen steps may be small, but they can often lead to rapid change. My experience with the clinic shows that sometimes all it takes is one small step to effect a dramatic improvement.

Small steps

When she realized that her willpower wasn’t strong enough to resist the final teaspoon, she held the spoon and tried to remove just one grain of the sugar from it before pouring the rest into her tea. The next day she tried to remove two grains of sugar from the teaspoon before pouring the rest in. She continued this, removing one or two more grains each day. It took almost a year to empty the teaspoon! She was forty-five years old when she related this story—and still taking her tea without sugar.

Cool for me

By training yourself to spot and solve small problems, you can avoid undergoing much more painful remedies later.

Interesting

Officers and crew are trained not to assume the system will run perfectly on its own. Instead, they look for the slightest signal that things are going awry. They listen for subtle signs of tension in pilots’ voices when they circle the ship to dump excess fuel.

basing their scrutiny on the assumption that anything that can go wrong, will.

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

The Harvard Business Review has reported that it’s much more efficient to leave a position empty than to fill it with the wrong person.

Really

When people are up against a thorny problem they’ve been unable to resolve, I generally advise them to focus on kaizen first.

Bestow Small Rewards Whether you wish to train yourself or others to instill better habits, small rewards are the perfect encouragement. Not only are they inexpensive and convenient, but they also stimulate the internal motivation required for lasting change.

Small things

“What makes you feel appreciated?” The resulting list is usually studded with free or low-cost items such as hearing the boss say “thank you,” receiving a compliment from a superior, or having someone bring them a cup of coffee when they’re working late.

To ask all the time to my pairs

In private life, small rewards show gratitude while preserving the natural sense of pleasure in a job well done. If they are employed in a friendship or marriage, they can be used with a sense of humor, so that both the rewarder and the rewardee maintain equal footing.

“No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.” —Aesop, “The Lion and the Mouse”

Humm

There are plenty of terrific ways to incorporate rewards into a kaizen plan. One client of mine lists the chores she does not want to do; if she completes these chores, she rewards herself at the end of the day by getting in the hot tub for ten minutes.

Looooooool

Other people who are trying to change a behavior, such as lighting up a cigar after dinner, will get a five-minute back or foot massage from their partner instead. This not only rewards them for not smoking; it also helps take their minds off the cigar during that vulnerable time.

Yees

“Most of us miss out on life’s big prizes. The Pulitzer. The Nobel. Oscars. Tonys. Emmys. But we’re all eligible for life’s small pleasures. A pat on the back. A kiss behind the ear. A four-pound bass. A full moon. An empty parking space. A crackling fire. A great meal. A glorious sunset. Hot soup. Cold beer. Don’t fret about copping life’s grand rewards. Enjoy its tiny delights. There are plenty for all of us.” —from an advertisement for United Technologies Corporation

Interesting

The kaizen approach to life requires a slower pace and an appreciation of small moments.

Ok

An American Airlines flight attendant took the time to notice that many of her passengers did not eat the olives in their salads. She thought this observation might be useful and passed this observation up the chain of command. It was eventually discovered that the airline was charged by its food supplier for salads based on the number of items they contained. The cost for a salad with one to four items was less than a salad with five to eight items. And the uneaten olives, it turned out, were the fifth item in the American Airlines salad. When the airline dropped the olives and switched to a four-item salad, it saved five hundred thousand dollars a year.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuk

Dave Gold, the owner of a liquor store, paid extra attention to an effect already well known to retailers: “Whenever I’d put a 99 cents sign on anything, it was gone in no time. I realized it was a magic number. I thought, wouldn’t it be fun to have a store where everything was good quality and everything was 99 cents?” Gold went on to create the 99¢ Only Stores chain, which now numbers 332 stores.

100f stores in Mali

Take George, a police officer who hated his job but just couldn’t think of a more suitable career. I asked him to find one moment each day when he enjoyed his police work. As he wrote down these small moments, he noticed a pattern. He felt most satisfied when he talked to prisoners in the squad car, asking them about their problems and giving them advice. He even loved to go back to the jail after the prisoner was booked—just to continue the conversation! It didn’t take long for George to see what had been right under his nose for so long: He wanted to become a counselor. George is now taking psychology courses at night. And his police work is more interesting now that he sees he’s gathering experience toward his new career.

George example

When you’re implementing a plan for change but find yourself bored, restless, and stuck, look around for hidden moments of delight. People who are most successful at improving their health habits are those who can transform exercise or eating well into a source of excitement and pride.

Yeahhh

“To be really great in little things, to be truly noble and heroic in the insipid details of everyday life, is a virtue so rare as to be worthy of canonization.” —Harriet Beecher Stowe “Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.” —Desmond Tutu

“Turning toward your spouse in the little ways is also the key to long-lasting romance. Many people think that the secret to reconnecting with their partner is a candlelight dinner or a by-the-sea vacation. But the real secret is to turn toward each other in little ways every day.” —John Gottman

By taking small steps, you set your mental compass in a new direction, allowing your mind to do the rest.

Yep