Shifting your mindset!

Kaizen!

How a little shift in mindset can lead to huge changes!

There is a little known Japanese business concept known as Kaizen that's become a staple for how I live my life. The main premise behind Kaizen is to make small, incremental improvements in key areas that overtime result in massive changes within an organization. But does this concept only apply to you if you wear a suit and tie and drink your coffee out of diamond studded travel mugs? Nope. This concept can be applied to absolutely everything from how you work, to your hobbies, to your relationships, even to how you workout.

In fitness culture, we tend to look mainly at the numbers on a paper or screen. How many reps did you do? How many pounds did you lift? How long did you go for? How much weight dropped off the scale? I could go on for days, but I think you get the point. But what happens when we check back in a week or month later, only to see that those numbers didn't budge? If you're like most people, you feel a stab of psychic pain that's accompanied by an onslaught of mental self-abuse about how you didn't get any better. But is this really true? What if that couldn't be further from the truth? And how many more questions am I going to ask before I make a good point??

Let's look at an exercise as an example. Last week, you did a 10 rep max of Back Squats at a set weight. This week, you did it again but failed to add any more reps or weight to the bar. Failure?

Nope.

Maybe the first few reps you did were easier than the last time. Kaizen. Maybe you shifted your weight in a minute way and had more core, glute or quad activation. Kaizen. Maybe you controlled your breath a little better and noticed you weren't light headed when you racked your weight. Kaizen. Maybe your knees or back didn't hurt this time, or if they did, maybe not as much. This my friends, is Kaizen as it can be applied to fitness.

When we set goals, there is a tendency to set our eyes on the prize, to march forward without delay, never averting our gaze from our destination until we've set foot upon it. Every set back or delay is looked at as something that's keeping us from our goal. Don't get my wrong, there is honour in that sort of single mindedness approach, but in doing so we miss out completely on the journey that got us there. We don't stop and look at the scenery, smell the smells or hear the cacophony of sounds around us. We don't taste the delights of the foods we intake and don't stop to enjoy the feelings that motivate us. We don't see how our bodies are continuously moving us towards our goal even when it feels like we're on life's version of a treadmill. Above all else, we certainly don't see the delays, pitfalls, detours and problems as learning opportunities that our path reveals to us for growth.

When you start practicing Kaizen on a personal level, you start looking at the most minute of things to see if your goal is any closer. You know where your goal is, but you're free to take your eyes off of it and embrace the journey in its entirety. You remember that the journey of a thousand miles begins with a shot of tequila and a bad decision- or maybe it was a single step.

You notice that while your 5k run time hasn't improved any, you can now climb a flight of steps without sounding like your Great Aunt Gretchin who smoked a pack of Marlboro Lights a day. Picking up your ever growing child is just as easy to you as it was when they were first born. Your shoulders hurt a bit less everyday. You feel a bit more energized and focused during the day. You now have 3 good days a week with your spouse instead of 1. Those push ups happen with a bit more finesse and ease. With Kaizen, you don't expect problems to go away and your goals to materialize instantly; but everyday you seek to make it a little better than it was the day before.

Imagine how your life would feel if you could find a 1% improvement in any area of your life daily. You would never hit a "plateau". You would never "fall off the rails". You would never need a triple shot of motivation just to get you moving, because you would know that just by showing up, trying at all and paying attention to yourself that you've improved just a little.