How many times you have made a decision to change or simply start a new way of life? Do you remember your last New Year’s resolution and what it was all about? It probably sounded something like this: “From now on I’ll start eating healthy food, I’ll be working out 3 times a week, I’ll take yoga classes, I’ll start meditating and I am going to read a book a day!”
It’s OK, every single person had been enthusiastic about something similar and failed to accomplish it at least once in their life. 
It’s very common and recommended that you set certain goals in life as it is normal to fail at some of them. But if this is happening frequently, it can be rather frustrating, especially if you are a procrastinator.
“I’ll do it later; I better do this next month; I’ll make sure I do that after 3 months.” Let’s face it, you’re never going to finish what you haven’t started yet.
Why is this all happening? Because sometimes reaching your goals is hard or even boring, and the habit of doing a particular thing isn’t developed yet. Now, no need to look for more information elsewhere, the answer is here!
A genius Japanese method called Kaizen is all about continuous improvement. The Kaizen method is famous for the so-called 1-minute principle and it works like this:
The key of this method implies that an individual should deal with concrete matters for 1-minute sharp, every single day in the exact time!
Just imagine that time – 1 minute! It sounds too short and way too easy for everybody. Laziness won’t stand in your way because the chores you have been avoiding to do in a period of 30 minutes, you’ll be doing them for just a minute each day.
And you’ll perform those tasks with great lightness and easiness. Whether it’s meditating, yoga, reading, doing crunches – if the time is limited to 1 minute, you’ll get all things done with such joy and pleasure. By taking small steps, you’ll definitely reach your goals and achieve excellent results.
What is Kaizen?
Kaizen is a practice of continuous improvement that was first established in Japan. One of its most important features is that big results come from the many small changes accumulated over time. Although the meaning of this practice is often misunderstood by the Westerners, the Kaizen method shows serious results in terms of improving both personal and professional life.
The reason why Kaizen is not so popular in the West lies in the false belief that one cannot achieve big goals without hard work. However, hard training, programs, and workshops are tough, time-consuming and overwhelming.
They take a lot of effort and energy that often might break the individual’s spirit and at the end they lack positive results. In this sense, Kaizen is intended for everybody and it can be implemented in different fields of interest.
The benefits of the Kaizen method include:
- Overcoming insecurity and unsteadiness
- Freeing oneself from the feeling of guilt and helplessness
- Developing a feeling of success and freedom
When to start practicing Kaizen?
NOW, obviously! All you need is a minute, remember? Being inspired by the 1-minute success, you’ll slowly start to increase the length of the exercise to 5 minutes and so on. At the end, you’ll reach the 30-minute exercise without even sensing that you are putting a particular effort at all.