Kaizen, Goals and Getting There

April 9, 2009 at 9:03 am · Filed under attention, focus, meditation, mindfulness, self development, self mastery

My stomach is growling. I’m driving south bound on the 101 focused intently on making it to the restaurant. I’m imagining the taste of the club sandwich I always order and its making my mouth water. My right leg is slightly cramped from all the driving I’ve been doing today as I fantasize about sitting down in a nice cozy booth with my beer in hand people I love… I’m pulling into the parking lot while I’m mulling over the next blog post I’ve got to write, and it occurs to me as I walk in and sit down that
my mind had already beaten me to the spot when my body was all the way back on the highway still driving. I had very little memory of the last ten minutes because my mind was jumping the gun so to speak. Focusing on the goal when I should have been bringing the totality of my awareness to each step along the way. This time I made it safe, sound, and intact… but it began the ball rolling in my head about the very real consequences of falling out of the moment.

Explaining to someone exactly what this quality we call mindfulness is can often easier be done by starting with what its not. When I’m in the car and my mind is dwelling on where I’m going instead of the part of the highway I’m driving on this very moment, that is NOT mindfulness. When I’m darting up the stair-case of my apartment building and I nearly trip and fall on the last step because for some reason my mind is back in a third grade classroom I haven’t visited in years… this is definitely NOT mindfulness.

So how can we be mindful and bring our full sense of awareness of the space between point A and point B? The answer lies in loose type of Japanese business philosophy called Kaizen .

This is a wide and open concept used amongst business professionals, personal development gurus, and anyone who wants to learn to accomplish more with less. The main philisophical thrust of Kaizen could be said to be its emphasis on gradual, incremental improvement over time. For instance, if the thought of having a gorgeous body was enough to get us in the gym for an hour a day every day then everyone would manage to go and have exactly the kind of body they want to have. I’m sure most of you, like me, realize that this kind of top down thinking doesn’t always manage to motivate you enough to stay on board. Before you know it you phase out of going all together.

Kaizen would say take one habit, one exercise, one chore and begin to perform just that one little manageable chore every day and begin to turn the heat up on your frog slowly, so to speak. Every week adding just a little more, the key is here to NEVER over do it… you want to add just a little so that the progress is easily maintained.

(Interview with Leo Babauta of Zen Habits … the king of setting good habits and goal.)

For most of us, worrying about bills to pay, where were going to go next, what so and so thinks about us… seems like rational self talk. I’ve heard many clients in the past say something to the effect of ‘if I don’t worry about paying the phone bill who will?!’ as if worrying about it and paying it are the same thing. I have met many a well-meaning person who had a deep confusion about where goal-orientated thinking stops, and obsessive paranoia begins.

It’s easy to see why so many people are engaged with their thinking in just this obsessive goal orientated kind of way. Which is to say we’re not tearing down the idea of having goals, merely pointing out that if you are so obsessed on getting there… wherever there is… you run the unnecessary risk of taking your mind out of the moment. and we all know that the physical manifestation of taking our mind off the moment is mistakes, accidents, and then tragedies. You may slide for years cruising down 4th St. with your knee holding the wheel steady but that one day when your mind is drifting away gently… I’ll let you fill in your own worst possible accident in your imagination. The important thing is realizing that accidents and mistakes that don’t come from a lack of knowledge, usually come from a lack of awareness.

The important quality to take away from Kaizen is that having a goal is necessary, wonderful even, but the way to achieve the goal is through gradual focused effort on each individual element/moment along the way. Strip away the extra junk and centered your goals around the most important things in your life so you can stop thinking about them, start working toward them, and enjoy every step of the journey along the way.

-Chris

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