One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way

low-key change helps the human mind circumnavigate the fear that blocks success and creativity.

At first glance, this appears to be nothing more than an example of a rock band’s narcissistic excess. Van Halen’s tours were among the first to bring highly technical, very complex stagecraft to venues. Their legendary lead vocalist David Lee Roth says, “We’d pull up with nine eighteen-wheeler trucks full of gear, where the standard was three truc

Kaizen has two definitions: using very small steps to improve a habit, a process, or product using very small moments to inspire new products and inventions

large goal ➞ fear ➞ access to cortex restricted ➞ failure small goal ➞ fear bypassed ➞ cortex engaged ➞ success

Michael Ondaatje, author of The English Patient, uses small questions when he sits down to write his novels. “I don’t have any grand themes in my head,” he says (a statement you’ll hear echoed by other great writers). Nor does he start with an impossibly large question, such as “What kind of character would be fascinating to readers?” Instead, he t

“Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.” —Mark Twain

This common but counterproductive phenomenon is captured in a familiar joke: A drunk is on his hands and knees looking for his keys under a streetlight. A policeman approaches him and asks, “What are you doing?” The drunk replies in a slurred voice, “I’m looking for my keys.” The policeman further inquires, “Where did you drop them?” The drunk says

“Confront the difficult while it is still easy; accomplish the great task by a series of small acts.” —Tao Te Ching

“When you improve a little each day, eventually big things occur. When you improve conditioning a little each day, eventually you have a big improvement in conditioning. Not tomorrow, not the next day, but eventually a big gain is made. Don’t look for the big, quick improvement. Seek the small improvement one day at a time. That’s the only way it h