Self-Improvement: The Kaizen Method

For anyone who has embarked on the journey of self-improvement or personal growth, you know instinctively that the improved and better version of yourself seems to lie at the other end of a roller coaster ride. The path to transformation will have many twists and turns, lots of steep hills, and often includes many setbacks and challenges that leave you questioning your decision to start a business or personal growth project.

There’s no doubt though, that once you reach your goals it is well worth the effort.

The Kaizen method is an approach to improvement that helps you embrace the marathon that is continuous growth, rather than expecting instant results and gratification. Instead of looking for ways to make it all everything great RIGHT NOW, this approach adopts a more realistic strategy that leads to success over time.

While the Kaizen method was originally developed as a business model, it also applies to personal growth and development. Instead of focusing on big, long-term goals that might fill you with overwhelm and are unlikely to be realised in the near future, the Kaizen method helps you focus instead on small, distinct steps that are achievable today, where you are, and with your current capabilities.

Kaizen is a compound of two Japanese words – ‘kai’ which means ‘change’ and ‘zen’ which means ‘good’ – ‘good change’ or ‘improvement’. The idea is to create continuous improvement and that small, consistent, positive changes will reap significant improvements.

Kaizen originated in post-World War II Japan in response to visiting American management and productivity consultants who encouraged quality control be put more in the hands of the workers. This method had huge success with groups of workers focused on preventing defects at Toyota and, since then, is one of the elements that has led to the success of Japanese manufacturing through high quality and low costs. You can, however, gain benefits from a kaizen approach in other working environments – both on a personal level and for a team in an organisation.

Motivational speaker, Tony Robbins, uses the acronym CANI – Constant And Never-Ending Improvement – to promote the idea of making consistent, small changes to your life rather than trying to change everything at once. Kaizen, too, focuses on continuous, incremental improvement that leads to significant, long-term change.

Understanding the Kaizen Method

Many people talk about Kaizen as being the ‘1 percent rule,’ because the focus is on doing one small thing every day that takes you closer to your desired outcome. So, rather than trying to make changes in substantial leaps and bounds, and being overwhelmed by the vastness of the challenge or the drastic changes you need to make, you instead break things down into manageable and doable tasks.

Anyone who has been on a strict and very limited diet will tell you what happens when you change everything very quickly. Change is much harder to realise.

The Kaizen method instead puts emphasis on the simple philosophy that every day, you focus on getting just a little bit better than you were the day before, in whatever way you are trying to change or improve. The power is when these small, incremental changes compound on each other, and the simplest of changes in the beginning soon combine with other minor changes to create significant and lasting effects.

The underlying foundations of Kaizen state that there isn’t a magic bullet that will suddenly appear and change your life or make everything better. And the sooner you realise and embrace this, the sooner you can actually start improving your life in meaningful ways. There’s no doubt that change can be hard but one of the ways to improve is to take small steps every day. It comes through continuous improvement, not overnight transformation.

It’s important to remember that the Kaizen method is a process, not a goal, in other words, there is no end point. It’s not something you ever really achieve as it’s something you commit to doing every day. And, once you reach a specific goal, the Kaizen method of thinking can help you maintain your results or secure your gains.

Rory Vaden, best-selling author and world-renowned strategist once said, "Success isn't owned, it's rented. And rent is due every day." In other words, success is a product of day-in-day-out application of good habits and disciplined actions. If you look at where you are falling short in life, the chances are you’re probably behind in the rent.

Tony Robbins puts it another way: “It’s not what we do once in a while that shapes our lives, but what we do consistently.”

If you want to succeed, you have to do the hard work every day and make those consistent habits that work a part of your daily habits so that it becomes who you are and what you do in the process.

Categories: : Motivation