Kaizen in Everything. But Why?

Continual improvement is something that is essential for progression in life.

Though we often resent the fact that our days and weeks remind us of Bill Murray’s groundhog day, the truth of the matter is that if you want to improve at just about anything, an above average level of consistency and persistence is absolutely necessary.

Now that doesn’t mean that we should do the exact same things day after day and never experiment with anything new. It means that we should become so automated with our process and the fundamentals of performance that we earn the right to get creative thereafter. We then can try a new experiment, see if it’s successful and as a result improve our process or even better, find out what absolutely doesn’t work.

By figuring out what direction we are definitely not going in, we in turn become clearer on what options are still available to us and what route to take next.

Naval Ravikant is a philosopher, entrepreneur, investor and multi-millionaire. His success so far and the brand that he has built would indicate that he understands the modern world and how it works more than most.

He has numerous illuminating quotes and a couple of life-altering books out on the market, but one of my favourite ones is “The only true test of intelligence is if you get what you want out of life.”

You see, one thing that Naval absolutely understands and something that I’ve picked up from him, is that in order to become a master at anything, you must first master yourself, your own cognition and your habits as well. If you can’t control how you think, how you behave and how you show up on a day to day basis, then you can’t expect to achieve the outcomes you want in your life.

We are the sum of our thoughts, our habits and our behaviours. Master your understanding of your own mind, how you move towards things that put you outside your comfort zone and how you reward yourself for doing so, and you’ll look back with great pride at all that you’ve done and achieved in your life.

Part of this, as with the experimentation example that I used above, is understanding your self-limiting thoughts and behaviours. These are the actions that no longer serve you in giving you access to what you want to achieve and experience. If you understand these and train yourself to not repeat these actions regularly, or better again repeat actions that are the exact opposite of these behaviours, then you’re going to be more likely to grow into the person that you want to be, with the life that you want to lead.

There is no way of ever knowing with certainty that what we do will lead to the outcome we want. However, we can increase the chances of success in just about anything by performing the actions that make success more likely on a consistent basis. Make persistence your superpower and you’ll be surprised just how far you can go.

Now, while you’ve been reading this, you’ve probably been thinking about success in life as correlated with external measures of it. You may be basing your own success in endeavours that others may perceive as important or may give you a great deal of respect for. However, as we all know, this is not the overarching meaning of life. Our soul purpose on earth is not to simply make money, win accolades and die. There are other aspects to life that are much more likely to fulfil us than external success.

However, the same principles of self-understanding, self-awareness and self-mastery also pertain to our internal, familial and social world. If we want to have a better connection to our friends and family, then we need to understand the thoughts and behaviours that don’t allow us to do so wholly. We must then identify what our self-limiting thoughts are, why we think that way and then replace them with more positive habits that will be more likely to give us what we want in the long-term.

Contrary to what many in the self-compassion and spirituality space will agree with, this is a conscious process. Self-compassion is not only about accepting yourself for who you are and then giving yourself what you want. It is about understanding yourself, accepting yourself where you are now and then practising behaviours that will be more likely to give you fulfilment in the long-term.

These behaviours should not be always centred around our own self-importance, self-indulgence and entitlement. Yes, you likely are a good person at your core and you do deserve to get the things that you want out of life, but that doesn’t mean that your life is any more important than anyone else’s.

If you stop to smell the roses from time to time, you’ll realise that our most fulfilling life moments often don’t revolve around ourselves, but around other people. So, therefore there are two key ways to feel more fulfilment in our lives going forward.

Firstly, we can master our own world and become the person we aspire to be. But this person is not solely for our own benefit, which brings me to our second key strategy for feeling fulfilment.

The person that we become should likely help us to serve and help more people. If we do that then it is likely that we will create stronger connections, greater trust with those in our circle and feel more fulfilled in our relationships as a result.

From what I’ve found out so far in my 29 years of life, the more people that you serve and the more pure your intentions to do so, the more you seem to gain and the closer you seem to become to the person that you want to be in the future.

Maybe I’m on the right path, maybe I’m not, but one thing I do know is that if this path ultimately does reach a dead end, then I’ll know exactly what route not to go down.

And that gives me options.