The Kaizen Way

This afternoon I heard for the first time about how a Japanese business management technique can be usefully adapted to making positive changes in one's life.

Like lightning, I rushed to Google this new word: kaizen.

The basic idea, as explained in One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way by Robert Maurer, is to make improvements in such tiny increments that resistance doesn't bother to kick in.

I love this idea. It could explain the ancient puzzle described by Paul in Romans 7:19 "the good I would do, I do not." I've never understood why it was often difficult and sometimes apparently impossible for me to do the "good I would do."

If I make too large a resolution, fight or flight kicks in and wins. Nothing changes.

Here's the story of a man who tried this approach and found it gradually and easily quite successful: How to Overcome Hesitation, Fear, and Laziness to Achieve Your Goals.

I have had an idea that the minimal approach works with writing: I'm ever suggesting to clients and workshop participants that they make a commitment of, say, 5 minutes a day. Nobody fights writing for 5 minutes, and once you've begun you tend to keep going on a lot of days. And even doing things 5 minutes at a time, they eventually get done.

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A Self-Actualizing, Pump-Up Technique

What I've discovered from writing the fellowship application I was blogging about yesterday:

Affirmations work. Or they can at least stoke the passions and build confidence.

You know what I mean by affirmations, yes? The empowering sayings we're encouraged to repeat to ourselves, such as: I am a calm and capable person. I am a person who doesn't even like sugar and caffeine.

I've never much been into repeating those items. I meditate and I blog and I exercise and do my work and that's all the discipline and structure I can stand.

Plus a screenwriter pal of mine once had an affirmations false alarm. She told me that repeating her declarations were giving her an amazing feeling of peace. But then the screenwriters' strike ended and she discovered that the peace was coming not from affirmations but instead from not listening for the phone. She quickly returned to amazing frazzlement.

However, I've spent the afternoon carefully wording my Career Narrative, which is every good thing I've done professionally in my life, and that amounts to a two-page affirmation. I have succeeded in dazzling myself. I am now so full of beans that it's just a shame it's the end of the day and time to quit and go home. (When I woke this morning, I was distinctly not-so-dazzled by me.

But now I know how a quick pump-up is done. Seriously. If I want to take charge, beat procrastination, make a step toward bold living, I could write down some good things I've actually done. These, I'm happy to say, do not include steering clear of sugar and caffeine.

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Following Bliss Upstream

Two recent bits of bold living that I'm proud to claim:

1. Took the whole Labor Day weekend off and caught up on reading and sleep (in order of importance.)

2. Am now at work on my application for a Guggenheim fellowship, which is a very prestigious and sought-after plum. I just ran across a not-so-encouraging item saying that as of 2006 only two people in the history of NC State University have received one of these. Oh, dear.

I didn't need to know this figure; I was already going to produce the best application I could. So I am now putting that potentially daunting info aside. I'm watching that miserable factoid slide out of sight.

Now back to boldly writing my Career Narrative.

Consistently keeping on is a crucial component in following any calling in life. It's more difficult, I think, than daring.

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