3 Essential Pillars Of Self Improvement
Adopting kaizen as a way of life is not easy. In fact it can be one of the hardest things you can do. However, trust me when I say, the rewards far exceed the effort. Take myself for example. I have applied the kaizen philosophy to my life and in just 18 months I tripled my income! and what’s more I have the pay checks to prove it. Now that’s improvement.
What you must remember is that, despite popular belief and emphasis, kaizen is not just a set of tools and it is not just a method for improving businesses. It is a life improvement philosophy and a very pragmatic life philosophy at that.
Many websites and blogs on the internet today that focus on self-improvement techniques have a very “mystical” twist. They ask people to sit under pyramids and chant Tibetan mantra’s while thinking themselves rich, or healthy, or whatever it is they seek. Kaizen on the other hand, is realistic and understands that if you want to improve you must work for it.
There are three pillars that kaizen teaches us upon which everything will rest and that we need to develop within ourselves if we want to improve our futures – intelligence, action and perseverance. Lets look at these in turn.
Intelligence. We need to recognize our weaknesses. We need to understand why things are going wrong and what’s more, we have to be brutally honest in doing so. Thats the only intelligent thing to do if we want to begin our improvement. For this reason having the intelligence to know ourselves and understand that something needs to be done is step one. Action. Praying and hoping doesn’t work. The only way to ensure success is to plan for it. That means preparing for success and taking action to ensure it happens. If for example our goal is to stop smoking, then we must plan for that to happen. We must draw up a map showing where we are today, were we want to be and the route we will take to get there. We must develop a long term strategy, such as reducing the number of cigarettes each day or week, and work out short term tactics to handle the day-to-day temptations. Without such positive and decisive action nothing will happen. Persistence. This is were kaizen comes into its own. Continuous improvement, the English translation of kaizen, means just that, continuous. Even if we find our fu=irst attempts fail, we try again, and again, and again until we succeed. And then we improve our situation some more. It never ends.
Being mindful of the above will help you improve because you will be taking control of the problem and actively doing something to help yourself. Whether you wish to quit smoking, loose weight, gain a promotion – by following the practical and pragmatic kaizen approach to improvement you will greatly increase your chances of success.
By: Andrew Scotchmer
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Filed under Improvement by on Jul 7th, 2010. 