Kaizen or the Art of Ongoing, Continuous Improvement

The tagline of this blog is: “how to improve the quality of your life, day by day”. That is why I got so excited when I found out about Kaizen. In this post I will give you a short introduction to Kaizen and explain how it can help you achieve your goals.

What is Kaizen?
According to Wikipedia:

Kaizen (Japanese for “improvement” or “change for the better”) refers to philosophy or practices that focus upon continuous improvement of processes in manufacturing, engineering, supporting business processes, and management

Kaizen is often translated in the west as ongoing, continuous improvement. It is based on making little changes on a regular basis: always improving productivity, safety and effectiveness while reducing waste.

Kaizen was first implemented in several Japanese businesses after World War II, influenced in part by American business and quality management teachers who visited the country. Toyota is one of the more well known companies that uses Kaizen in its business approach.

Kaizen and Personal Development
Now we know a little about the application of Kaizen in business, but how does that relate to your own personal development and achieving your goals? Well, life tends to involve a lot of changes. And this is especially the case when you set out some big goals for yourself. Change is something your brain tends to have some problems with. You might experience feelings of overwhelm or sabotage your own success, often unconsciously. You can probably think of a few cases where you went after a big goal, full of excitement. And after a few days of hard work, a few days of half-hearted attempts and a whole lot of procrastination you say farewell to this goal and move on the next best thing.

Kaizen can help you in this. The key is to take baby steps. This is just like applying the Law of Process. Take a few simple steps and continue to do this every day. Each day, week or month you take on a bit more or you take different simple steps that drive you closer to your goal. This way change is not so overwhelming and you will see that it becomes a habit to go on achieving your goal in small, simple steps.

Kaizen and EFT
EFT or Tapping can of course help you when you feel overwhelmed. If you are unfamiliar with EFT, you can read How to Get Started with EFT. This works great in combination with Kaizen. Every day you take a few small steps. If you then experience any feelings of unease or overwhelm, you use EFT on those issues and move on. This should eliminate those blocks that are between you and achieving your goal.

Examples
So what can you use Kaizen for? Like EFT/Tapping you can use it on everything. Here are a few examples:

• Exercise: if you need to get into shape and want to exercise more, just begin with a few simple exercises. Take the stairs whenever possible or walk in front of the TV every night. This will not get you into shape overnight, but it builds the habit of exercising. You can then move on to things like walking or running a few miles or whatever suits your purposes.
• Eating and drinking: it can be really difficult to change eating and drinking patterns. What if you practically live on coffee, but you would like to abandon that altogether. Chances are high that you will not succeed in one try. What you could do is reduce your caffeine intake by a few cups day by day. Instead of having coffee right after your lunch break, have some water or herbal tea.
• Guitar playing: it is often better to practice an hour a day, instead of skipping the week days and annoy your dog and your neighbors for the entire Saturday. Set out some exercises you want to practice and work on those and only those exercises for that week. The next week you pick up some new exercises. That way you stay focused on improving particular skills.

Changing in the Kaizen way is not always the fastest way to create big changes, but then again making the changes last is often the most difficult part. Make small changes every day, celibrate along the way, and you are on a much surer road to success.

You can probably think of other ways to apply Kaizen. Share them with us in the comments.

And, as always, have fun!

Gerber