Kaizan Blog

Check out the latest books  added to the Kaizan website:

Business - What’s the key to the success of McDonalds? They may not make the best burger, but you know what you are getting when you order a Big Mac all over the world. And this is all down to business processes that simplify the tasks and make them easy to replicate. In the classic book , The E-myth Revisited, Michael Gerber explains how you can create processes that allow you to step aside from the daily grind of your business. This means you are working on your business instead of in it.

Wealth - If you want to learn about investing, why not learn from the best? In The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life, you get to learn everything about the man who is the world’s most successful investor.

Personal Development - A classic in the personal development field, the Magic of Thinking Big by David Schwarz will show you how you can introduce “thinking big” into your life. It was first published in 1959 and is still around for a very good reason: it works.

Health - This book has a long title but contains vital information that you can use to make sure your family eats well and on a budget. How to Feed Your Whole Family a Healthy Balanced Diet, with Very Little Money and Hardly Any Time, Even If You Have a Tiny Kitchen, Only Three Saucepans … - Unless You Count the Garlic Crusher… Need I say more?

Spirituality - If you liked the article about living life to the fullest, then you will love this book by Jon Kabat-Zinn, Wherever You Go, There You are. It will teach you the principles of mindfulness in a way that you really can start experiencing life to its fullest.

Relationships - Do you feel like you need a man to make you happy? Do you think that relationships equate with pain?  If so, then this could be the book for you.  Women Who Love Too Much is written for women who keep finding themselves in unhealthy relationships and what to do about it.

Too often, when we aim to start a new positive habit, we go for the “big change”. You can see this most often in New Year’s resolutions when people who are currently doing no exercise at all will make a pledge to suddenly start going to the gym for one hour a day.

This is a great goal, but going overnight from no gym-time to one hour a day is very difficult to sustain for the majority of people. And yet, most people try it this way and then seem disappointed when their new “habit” lasts less than a week.

Rather than setting yourself up for failure, approach your new habits from a different angle. I was once given advice about starting a business that is also true of habit formation:

Think Big but Start Small

With your new goal or habit, aim high but start small. Don’t aim for an hour at the gym straight away, just aim for five minutes. Literally five minutes. Now you might think that is ridiculous, since you’ll almost certainly spend more time travelling to the gym than actually exercising but that’s missing the point: In the beginning, it’s not about the amount of time you spend at the gym, it’s about developing the habit of actually going to the gym.

If you finish the five minutes and feel like doing more, that’s fine, but try and keep the experience as short and as easy as possible. There are four good reasons for the five minute gym visit:

1. You get success under your belt.
2. It’s not unpleasant so you will feel less resistance to going again the next day
3. It takes so little time that you can’t use “I haven’t got the time” as an excuse not to do it.
4. You develop the habit

Once you have developed the habit then you can start building up the time you spend at the gym (10 minutes, 20 minutes etc). With the habit firmly established, it will be easier to build on it.

This approach can be applied to any habit. Instead of 20 minutes meditation, start with 30 seconds. Instead of one hour reading, start with two minutes.

Big goals are great but on the road to achieving them it’s better to start with small steps.

Check out the latest articles drawn from the best blogs on the planet and now on the Kaizan website:

1. Wealth - if you want to save money, the important thing to remember is to pay yourself first. Don’t pay your bills, spend all your money and then take what’s left over for your savings. Often, there will be nothing left over. 15 Painless Ways to Pay Yourself First

2. Business - Leaving the safety (and constraints) of a 9-5 job can be a daunting move. Why not get some advice to do it right? How to Escape Your Job

3. Personal Development - Procrastination is the thief of time, apparently. When you get around to it, read this article about: How to Stop Procrastinating

4. Health - There are plenty of health myths out there. Don’t waste your time doing something that doesn’t even benefit your health. Five Health Myths Debunked

5. Spirituality - Wouldn’t you like to live to the fullest? How to Live Life to the Fullest

6. Relationships - How do you know if he really is Mr Right? Is He the Right Man for You?

Everything we do is to get happiness. Our whole lives revolve around it. For instance, we go to work either to get happiness from the job itself or to earn money to spend on things that will give us happiness later.

And yet if that’s the reason for our existence, why then, are so many people unhappy? If you ask most people, there’s usually something that has to happen before they can allow themselves to be happy.

 “Once my business starts earning money, I’ll be happy”

 “Once I find the perfect partner, I’ll be happy”

“When I retire I’ll be happy”

There are an infinite number of reasons people will give as to why they can’t be happy right now. But will solving their problems bring them happiness? No. Absolutely not. It will just be replaced by another condition that needs to be fulfilled.

As an example, someone who goes job hunting for the first time might say:

“If I could just get a job, I’d be happy”. Later, this is replaced by:

“This job is no good at all. It’s really boring. If I could just get a promotion then I’d be happy.” Later on, this is replaced by:

“I hate this new position in the company. It’s making me miserable. Now, if I could get a better job at that other company that would be much better! Then I’d be happy!” and so on.

The cycle continues. Something will always be standing between you and happiness.

It never stops, UNLESS YOU STOP IT.

So what should you do?

1.      Appreciate what you have right now. There are plenty of reasons to be happy right now

2.      Accept that staking your happiness on a future situation will never make you happy.

Remembering that you can only be happy now is something that you have to keep reminding yourself every moment of the day. It’s so easy to slip back into “once this is sorted out, then I’ll be happy.” Fight that thought and be happy now!

Your habits are what make the difference between success and failure. And the way you start the morning sets the tone for the rest of the day. So what are the best habits to develop each morning?

Here is a list of 6 that could make a huge difference to your life:

1.      Meditation / Solitude

Quiet time for the mind helps you to focus during the day. Meditation can also be very beneficial for your health.

2.      Exercise / Yoga
Getting exercise done in the morning means its out of the way early and can’t be displaced when something else comes up in the evenings.

3.      Review Previous Successes
You know all about the value of acknowledging your successes from reading this.

4.      Eat Breakfast
It’s so easy to give breakfast a miss, but there are good reasons why you should eat breakfast every day.

5.      Be Grateful for What you Have
If you can’t appreciate what you have right now, you will NEVER be happy.

6.      Plan your day and review your goals
Do you ever get through a day and realise you achieved nothing of value? It’s because you didn’t have your goals in mind during the day. For more on goal setting see here.

Well, that’s my top 6. Can you think of any other habits that should be on the list? 

When you aim for a big goal (or even not so big) you can expect to have challenges along the way. Some of these challenges are easy to cope with.  Others can be so large that they make us question whether we have what it takes to overcome them.

It’s not a question of whether you will have problems along the way. The real question is how you will deal with them.

So what should you do, when you feel confidence draining and doubt taking over?

When the Going gets Tough, Remember your Successes.

The key is to remember all the times that you were successful and were able to overcome challenges. When you remind yourself of previous successes you re-focus on your strengths. Past successes serve as proof that you have the ability to succeed. If you can recall times when your  problems seemed overwhelming but you managed to get through it, then coping with your present difficulties may not seem so impossible.

Most of all, remembering your successes restores your confidence and self-belief: essential ingredients for coping with challenges.

Sadly, when things get tough that’s often the time when we forget all of our previous victories in life. It’s very easy in the heat of the moment to make a blanket statement like: “I’ve never succeeded in anything in my life!” And the minute you start feeling like that, your confidence leaks away and things become even more difficult.

So instead of trying to think up successes after things have gotten tough, why not write them down ahead of time?

Try this:

1.      Write down any successes you have achieved in your life. And I mean all of them! Go back to when you were born and work forward!

2.      Write down any difficult problems that you have managed to overcome in your life. No problem is too small to write down.

3.      Write down any compliments that anyone has ever given you.  No comment is too trivial. Even “I like that tie” counts.

And remember, the more the merrier. The aim is to write down so many successes that it becomes overwhelming proof. I’m talking 50-100 successes, but more is ideal.

One new idea can transform everything. Think back to a time when you were struggling with a “problem”. And then you learnt a new way of looking at it or dealing with it and everything changed immediately. Suddenly it wasn’t a problem any more. In any area of your life, an idea can literally change everything.

The key then, is finding the right ideas that you can apply in your life. But if you are waiting around for the idea to fall in your lap, then you could be waiting a long time. Instead, what if you were to actively try and find one new idea every week that you could apply to your life? What sort of difference do you think that could make?  

Why not try it?

And let us help you! We’ve added the new Kaizan Articles section to the website. We are going to keep adding new articles that will hopefully help you to get those great new ideas that can revolutionise your thinking and your life.

Check out the Articles section right now for:

The Secret Ingredient for a Better Marriage

How to Create an Abundance Mindset

The 9 Methods for Mastering Your Money

Five Ways to Speak Like Obama

The Basis for All Successful Sales

and much more….

“I woke up today in a bad mood”

How many times have you heard someone say that? How many times have you said it yourself?

But the fact is people don’t wake up in a bad mood. The bad mood that we think we “woke up with” is a result of the thoughts we allowed ourselves to think just after we got up.

Imagine waking up in the morning and having these thoughts:
“I feel so tired. I don’t think I got enough sleep last night.”
“I can’t believe she said that to me yesterday. I should have said something back.”
“Why can’t I get a good job?”
“Why does my wife treat me so badly?”

Who could possibly be in a good mood after having thoughts like that? And yet, so many of us allow ourselves to think these kinds of “day-destroying” thoughts on a regular basis.

For many of us, the thoughts we allow ourselves to think when we first wake up determine the quality of our day. Notice I say we allow ourselves to think those thoughts. This is an important point:

THOUGHTS DON’T JUST HAPPEN TO US.

There are lots of people walking around out there who think that they are a victim of their thoughts. When a bad thought comes they must entertain it; there is no choice for them. “It’s come out of my mind, it must be mine and I must nurture it”. But that is most definitely not the case.

You always have a choice about the thoughts you think. You are not a victim. You can think thoughts that make you feel good. Or you can obsess about past negative experiences, get nervous about future situations and ruin your day from the moment you wake up. Either path is possible, but always know that you make the choice.

Every single moment, you decide whether you will entertain a positive or a negative thought. It’s when you release control of this decision that you become a victim. When you leave yourself at the mercy of whatever thought pops in to your head, then you have no control over whether you’re going to be in a good mood or a bad mood.

Be aware that this battle occurs every moment of the day, but especially when you first wake up. Being aware will make you more likely to resist negative thoughts and start off your day in the best possible way.