November 26th, 2007
Taking Steps To Be The Way You Want To Be
In regards to being over forty, and not wanting to feel as though we are aging or feel older than our biological age, we realize that there may be some changes to make. Does the task of changing habits ever seem overwhelming to you, or that there is too much to do?
There is a wonderful strategy that is known and used in business for achieving goals that is called “Kaizen.” You can think of Kaizen as the concept of small steps for continual improvement. The opposite of Kaizen is the idea of innovation; innovation is making a huge change to achieve a goal. For instance, to take an innovative approach to helping your family eat better foods, you would go through the pantry and refrigerator and freezer and throw out all foods that aren’t on the lists from the dozens of books you just researched. It is a huge turn around, and quite a jolt!
A Kaizen approach might be to make a list from one or two books of what you may want to delete, and what you may want to add to your family’s diet and your own diet. Next you may discuss with family what is one (devoid of nutrition) food you could eliminate on a daily basis to start. Perhaps you could replace that with a new (nutrient dense) food.
Do you see the difference? While one change is drastic and harsh, the other is gentler. While the drastic option may reach its goal faster, the other milder option can achieve the goal, without the sense of frustration that highly innovative methods bring forth.
According to Robert Maurer in his book, “The Kaizen Way: One Small Step Can Change Your Life, “ he states that this gentle but consistent change may help to move the person around those fears that block the successful outcome.
What is one goal you may have that in order to achieve you could try this approach? One of my goals that comes to mind for me is being neat and clutter free. Instead of being held hostage to a neat house, or car, or whatever, I will take one habit and be consistent with that for a month. For instance, I can throw the junk mail out as soon as I take it out of the mailbox. Then, once that habit is established, I would move on to establish another good habit.
What is one small step you can take to achieve your goals, using this approach of Kaizen? Can you imagine that in one year from now you will be glad you did take those small but mighty steps?
Taking one small step,
Lorraine
