Kaizen

Kaizen is the Japanese philosophy of “continuous improvement,” which is often used in business but can also be applied to personal growth, offering us a path to self-improvement that’s less plagued by pressure and anxiety and more marked by small, daily steps adding up to incremental but meaningful progress.

As we’ve already learned, Kaizen was originally a business theory. It started when the US wanted to help Japan restart its economy after World War II. It’s since helped many companies, including one of the most popular car brands—Toyota.

Kaizen was so helpful to Japanese companies that it eventually came back to the US. There it made inroads into the business world and has now expanded into the personal growth sphere.

In Japanese, the word translates to many things, but the main idea is simply “change.” To take advantage of the power of change, you need to start with your habits. Which means you’ll have to look hard at the habits you already have.

Your brain is always making habits as a way to save power on repeated behaviors. This preserves your mental energy for bigger, tougher tasks. But because it’s so automatic, you might form unwanted habits.

This is why you start by interrogating your habits to make an inventory of your life. Get a piece of paper, divide it into the major sections of your life. Then, go through all areas of life and ask yourself if you’re doing all you can to be happy in that area.

Dig deep to find out what you really seek. When you’re done with that, finish by writing down your biggest aspirations in each category.

The story of the British cycling team is one of the most inspiring examples of how Kaizen works in the real world. The team had always done terribly in the Olympics, and they wanted to change that. They scrutinized and improved every little component of cycling, from the bikes themselves to nutrition and more. Not a single factor was considered too insignificant. These small “1% improvements” added up in a big way, and the team took most of the gold medals in the 2008 and 2012 Olympics. Small changes like these aren’t usually easy to make because we don’t see the rewards immediately. In contrast, it’s easier to give in to a bad habit because they involve things that do reward us instantly. Kaizen fixes this problem by focusing on changing things in such a tiny way that your brain hardly notices. Ask yourself “What tiny steps can I take to move me closer to my goal?” Don’t discount things that seem ridiculously easy, either. They work! If you want to eat healthier, for instance, maybe you…