The kaizen philosophy of creating good change with small continuous steps will help you overcome resistance, lower your shoulders, and create a life for you with less pressure. Once you get this philosophy of kaizen under your skin, you’ll begin to apply a more gentle way to live.

Taking small steps might be hard to get your head around in the beginning. You’re taking small steps every day and that doesn’t seem to have had a big influence on your life. But there's a difference between going about your day-to-day life in the way you know best, and making a conscious decision to use small steps strategically to achieve a goal or create a change in your life.

The difference is that you make a decision to live with intention in a gentle and kind way.

You can reach any goal and dream you want, and I’m a big believer in dreams and goals, it’s just that the way you achieve what you want is by using the kaizen philosophy of small steps, asking small questions to activate your creativity and celebrating small wins along your way to success.

When you know a small step is small enough

You know your step is small enough when you think the step is a bit silly. If you want to write a book, a small step can be to think about a character for 5 minutes.

If you want to tidy your desk, a small step can be to move a pencil. Do you want to write a blog post? The first step is to open your computer. Keep doing small things, taking small steps, solve small problems before they get big. Tidy up a little but often, instead of waiting until the mess is overwhelming.

How kaizen philosophy can help overcome resistance

The kaizen philosophy is about non-pressure and bypassing fear in the brain, so you can use this method to get still and listen to your body and inner voice.

Step 1

Ask yourself a small question that relates to overcoming resistance
Examples:

• What is one small thing that makes me feel good?

• What could be a tiny, easy step to get started?

• What is one small enjoyable step that is related to the thing (that you resist)?
  

Step 2

Make sure you ask in a gentle and patient spirit. Otherwise, you won’t get a positive answer.

Step 3

Ask your question at least once a day and wait patiently for your subconscious to come up with an answer.
The power of asking ourselves small questions lies in being patient and asking repeatedly.

As Robert Maurer writes in his book "The Spirit of Kaizen"

Other ways kaizen small questions can help overcome resistance…

Kaizen keeps making my life better. Every time I am doing something new, and I feel resistance - which is pretty much every time - I think of a small step I can do to begin. It gets me started again and again.

Once you get this philosophy under your skin and use small steps to improve your life, or simply approach things you’ve always done, with this new way of thinking, you’ll see it spread positive rings in the water. You’ll lighten up a little because you’ll put less pressure on yourself.

Maybe you have a work situation where you would normally freak out but now you take a step back and ask “What is one small step I can take to solve this?”

Perhaps you’ve been putting off decluttering your house because it’s a huge, overwhelming job. But now you can just think of a small step to start decluttering one corner of a room, or one drawer. Just remove one thing.

One final question:

What is one small thing you can do today, to make you feel good about yourself?