Kaizan Blog

Desire is the fuel of all goal achievement. If an Olympic athlete didn’t really, really want to win the gold medal, then there is no way they would put up with all the years of training necessary to compete at that level. Contrast that commitment with the usual vague wishes that the average person comes up with and you can see why a lot of people struggle to achieve their goals.

Napoleon Hill, in the classic book “Think and Grow Rich” called it a burning desire and it’s when you want something so bad, that nothing will stand in your way.

You may dream about success but dreams will only get you so far. If you were to develop a desire so strong that you would do everything in your power to accomplish it then your chances of success are infinitely greater. That’s the power of desire.

But what do you do if you don’t feel that strong desire for your goal? It’s very common. The problem is that some people start thinking “If I don’t feel a strong desire for it, maybe my goal isnt the right one?”  Or others see people who are passionate about their goals and conclude that ”maybe I’m just not passionate about anything?”

But the thing you may not realise about desire is that isn’t all or nothing. And it also isn’t something that strikes out of the blue. Most desires develop over time. They need to be nurtured. The conventional wisdom is “if you desire something, you will think about it a lot”. But did you know that the converse is also true: “if you think about something a lot, you will desire it“. This astounds some people.

Imagine this scenario (better yet, try it for yourself to be absolutely sure): You pick out a random travel destination, let’s say Rome. It’s a place you may have thought about as a nice place to visit for a holiday, but had no real commitment to visit. For a few days, you force yourself to think about it all the time. You visit websites about Rome, read novels set in Rome and talk to your friends about nothing else. From the moment you wake up, to the moment you go to bed you make sure that it’s all you think about.

After a few days, you would almost certainly have an increased desire to visit Rome. The sustained focus has made you want something you were almost indifferent to a few days earlier.

And it’s the same with your goals. It may take longer, but if you talk and think about your goals all the time, your desire will increase.

Action Step

Try it! Start obsessing over your goal. Force yourself to make it your focus for every waking moment. Your desire will increase in proportion to how much you do this.

I used to work in an office where one of my colleagues was held up as a model of dedication and devotion to work. The main reason for this was that he worked much longer hours than others, generally not leaving the office till 9pm.

However despite the long hours, the odd thing was that he was always behind on deadlines. In fact, as time went on he was missing more and more deadlines and struggling to cope. How could he be working so hard and still be falling behind?

The reason was that he was writing reports that contained unnecessary detail and flowery language (e.g. “I will be detained by prior commitments that will render me unable to apportion appropriate time to this activity” instead of “I am busy”). This made his reports 2-3 times longer than they needed to be. This obviously meant he took longer to get things done than others.

What struck me most about this situation was that when he was confronted with this information, he was very resistant to making any changes. Simply by removing some of the unnecessary detail, he would have produced better reports, in less time, using less energy. And yet he couldn’t believe there was a solution to this that didn’t have a downside. He fought it all the way.

Technological development in our society is all about discovering more efficient ways to do things faster and better with less resources. So why can’t people apply those principles to their lives? It’s because they get stuck in doing things the way they always have. And the costs are huge. The colleague in the above example never got home before 10pm. What kind of family and social life do you think he had?

In what areas of your life is your adherence to set ways of doing things costing you?

Action Step

Look at some area of work and life that takes you a lot of time and energy and think about whether there is a way to do it better and more efficiently. Compare the way you do things to the way other people approach the same task.  Can you apply some of their ideas to your approach?

Notice how attached you are to the way you do things now but also think about the possible gains to be had by finding new approaches.

Examples of areas to examine could include:

1. Your daily routine

2. Work tasks

3. Household chores

In an earlier blog post we talked about the value of writing down your successes. Unfortunately since then, some people have told me that they really struggled to come up with a list of any meaningful successes. In other words they were unsuccessful!

Of course this is rubbish. It’s not that they haven’t been successful, it’s that their definition of what counts as success is so harsh, that nothing meets the grade. They are literally cheating themselves out of success.

Ok, so I’m sure there are ways that we can all be more successful, that is after all, the foundation of Kaizan, but that doesn’t mean that we should discount what we have achieved so far.

Here are some things to remember about defining success:

The press and television have no idea what success is

In today’s society, we get brainwashed into thinking that success is all about fame and money. Bringing up healthy well-adjusted children is no longer considered a success unless you are also a billionaire. Someone volunteering at a charity is not a success but someone appearing on a reality TV show is. Don’t let those deranged viewpoints affect your perception of what being successful is.

Success is personal

There are many things that you may have accomplished that may not seem like much to anyone else but are significant for you. Someone I know has never driven her car more than a mile from her house. The other day she overcame that fear and drove 1.5 miles away. Ok, it might not mean much to most people, but it was still a significant achievement for her and so that makes it a success.

Small successes count.

Don’t discount small successes. In any major achievement, the big victory would not have been possible without the smaller successes along the way. Whatever you are trying to achieve, you need to celebrate every milestone along the way to success, not just the final destination.

How things turned out doesn’t affect whether or not it was a success

“I beat lots of other applicants to get a really sought after job but the company went broke three months later.”

“I managed to lose some weight but now I’ve gained it all back”

These quotes are examples of classifying whether something was a success based on what happened later on. In the first example, the person still beat many applicants to get a sought after job. That is, by anyone’s measure, a success. In the second example, losing the weight was still an accomplishment. It also makes that person more likelier to succeed next time than someone who had never lost the weight before. Don’t rob yourself of successes by thinking about what happened later. By that logic, Abraham Lincoln achieved nothing in his presidency because he got shot.

We have all had successes in our lives. Make sure that the way you classify success isn’t cheating you out of what is rightfully yours.

We’ve found some new articles to help you get more out of life:

If you find it hard to make time to look after your finances, you might one day wake up and find all of your money gone. Avoid that unhappy fate by taking care of your money in the least time possible with:  Five Minute Finance Fixes

In a global recession, with many people losing their jobs and scared for the future, wouldn’t it be quite handy to find out the secret to doubling your income (in any market)?

That pot plant is the reason you’re a failure. Or is it? Learn how to structure your environment to better support you in achieving your goals with Feng Shui On Steroids: Design Your Space to Achieve Your Goals.

Surely looking in the mirror and flexing your biceps is as good as going to the gym? Apparently not.  Don’t let your gym allergy turn you into a health disaster. Find out 14 Simple Ways to Convert Your Sedentary Lifestyle.

Little strokes fell great oaks. Find out the secret to how narrowing your focus can make a big change: The Art of the Small- How to Make an Impact.

He’s wearing a leather jacket and shades. He must be bad news. But then why do all the women go for him? Find out the fascinating reasons why in Why Do Women Go For the Bad Boys.

Do you ever feel overwhelmed by a big goal you’ve set for yourself? There’s too much to do and so much needs to happen that the goal seems impossible. It makes you feel anxious and discouraged when you think about how much is ahead of you.

Whether you’re creating a successful company, building your dream home, studying for an exam or re-building your life after a relationship breakup, this feeling of being overwhelmed can be a familiar emotion.

What are you focussing on when you feel overwhelmed? Most likely it is the entirety of the challenge ahead. In any big goal there are lots and lots of steps that need to be taken. When you think of everything that needs to be done to get to the final goal, your mind struggles to cope. It creates anxiety because it’s impossible to focus on everything at once.

But guess what? You don’t need to focus on everything at once.

All you ever really have to think about is the NEXT STEP.

Big goals need vision. You should certainly have an idea of where you are heading. You also need a plan which gives you some idea of the steps required to achieve your goals. But once you have set your goal and worked out a plan, you don’t need to worry about every single step, you just need to focus on the next one.

For instance, when some people study for an exam, they become anxious about how much information they need to read and remember. The whole textbook! It’s easy to see why the thought of reading an entire textbook can cause anxiety. It’s a lot of information. But the fact is you can’t read the textbook all at once. You can only read one sentence at a time. And you only need to focus on that next sentence.

Don’t make things harder than they are. When a goal is large, the number of steps involved is far more than anyone can focus on at one moment. Don’t waste your mental energy trying to handle it all at the same time. Plan what you need to do and then get working on the next step of the plan. As long as you are making timely progress, one step at a time, you will reach your goal.

Join our new Kaizan Twitter feed (http://twitter.com/kaizantweets) where you can get live updates of:

• Events
• New Articles
• New Blog posts
• New Books

that are added to the site.

Don’t know what Twitter is? No problem! Check out these links to find out more:

http://tweeternet.com/

http://www.commoncraft.com/Twitter

I recently heard a business coach say  that Twitter was “just the  ’I'm going to the toilet now….brushing my teeth now’ aspect of Facebook that only Gen Y seem to care about.”

He couldn’t be more wrong! Check out this great article:

http://www.doshdosh.com/ways-you-can-use-twitter/

Joining the Kaizan Twitter feed is the fastest way to get updates about Self-Development events, books and articles on the Kaizan website.

See you on Twitter! (http://twitter.com/kaizantweets)

“Man is troubled not by events, but by the meaning he gives them.” Epictetus - 1st century AD

By now, most people are pretty familiar with the idea that it’s not what happens to you, it’s how you interpret it that determines your happiness.

For example, two people suffer a relationship break up. One looks on it as the end of the world as we know it. The other looks on it as an opportunity for freedom and excitement. Same event. Two different ways of looking at it. Consequently two very different emotions arise from the same situation. So there is no such thing as a “bad” event, if you have a positive interpretation of it.

But while people may accept this as true in a  hypothetical example, they will often look at their own lives and say “But in my case, I can’t choose to interpret this in any other way. The fact is…”

But how true is this? There are many examples in history where even “facts” acknowledged by experts and society at large were proven to be wrong (earth is flat, Y2K, Decca records telling the Beatles in 1962 that “guitar groups are on the way out”). Experts and society often get things wrong. But what about you personally? How often do you misinterpret situations?

“I have been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.” Mark Twain

Like Mark Twain,  a lot of us often assume that the worst thing is going to happen and we are often wrong. We are also notoriously bad at predicting the significance of certain events. How often has the worst thing that ever happened to you, actually turned out to  be the best thing that ever happened to you?

And how often have you interpreted someone’s actions wrongly because you didn’t have all the information? Many of us can recall times when we thought someone was being rude or difficult only to discover later that they were actually upset over something that was happening in their own lives.

The point is, we often don’t know the correct interpretation of a particular situation, and yet we continue to insist that we have interpreted the situation correctly and that we are justified in feeling angry, sad or disappointed.

So, when faced with a situation, rather than opt for what may or may not be the correct interpretation (you’re probably wrong anyway):

Go for the explanation that serves you the best.

Let’s take the example of the credit crunch / recession. Two beliefs could be:

1. The economy is falling apart. We’re in for years of misery.

2. This is a time with huge opportunities and I could make use of them in a way I couldn’t have before

One of these beliefs is correct. Perhaps it is the first one, I dont know. But if you were to assume the first one, you would do nothing except possibly lie on your bedroom floor in the fetal position. If you assumed the second belief was true you would be much more likely to get out there and be proactive. Which one would serve you best, even if it wasnt correct? Clearly the second one.

You DONT know what the facts are. You are often wrong. So don’t go on “facts”. Interpret events in the way that serves you best.

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?