How to Fail: make big changes

I have a friend who manages a gym. He tells me that the majority of revenue his gym generates comes in the first three months of the year. Every year, without fail, well-intentioned people come in to sign up for a year-long membership. These people intend to make big fitness changes in their life, to lose weight or to work out every day. Also without fail, these people are gone by Groundhog Day. We all know that people fail on their New Year’s Resolutions, but we often don’t know why.
They fail because they tried to make big changes.
Studies have shown that a hallmark of all successful “change” programs is a focus on frequent, small, achievable goals. These small steps build self-confidence and create momentum toward the positive changes participants are seeking.
A similar phenomenon occurred in Japan during the rise of the Japanese auto industry. At the encouragement of American W. Edward Deming, Japanese automakers began instituting programs that empowered all workers to look for and implement small improvements in quality. In Japan, this philosophy is referred to as “Kaizen” (translated: continuous improvement).
“The fear of change is rooted in the brain’s psychology,” writes Dr. Robert Maurer. In his book, One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way, Maurer explains how the brain is wired to reject big changes because the steps involved are simply too complex to process. This is why the big changes people “resolved” to implement at the New Year never happen. The kaizen philosophy of small steps works by prompting the brain to make small connections in nerve pathways one at a time. In this way, these small steps “trick” your brain to eventually accomplishing big changes one small improvement at a time.
Instead of dreaming about your perfect life and setting lofty, distant goals to get there, focus on what you can do today to move one step closer to the person who you want to be. Tomorrow, repeat and keep repeating continuously. After all, Kaizen is translated as “continuous improvement.”

I have a friend who manages a gym. He tells me that the majority of revenue his gym generates comes in the first three months of the year. Every year, without fail, well-intentioned people come in to sign up for a year-long membership. These people intend to make big fitness changes in their life, to lose weight or to work out every day. Also without fail, these people are gone by Groundhog Day. We all know that people fail on their New Year’s Resolutions, but we often don’t know why.

They fail because they tried to make big changes.

Studies have shown that a hallmark of all successful “change” programs is a focus on frequent, small, achievable goals. These small steps build self-confidence and create momentum toward the positive changes participants are seeking.

A similar phenomenon occurred in Japan during the rise of the Japanese auto industry. At the encouragement of American W. Edward Deming, Japanese automakers began instituting programs that empowered all workers to look for and implement small improvements in quality. In Japan, this philosophy is referred to as “Kaizen” (translated: continuous improvement).

“The fear of change is rooted in the brain’s psychology,” writes Dr. Robert Maurer. In his book, One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way, Maurer explains how the brain is wired to reject big changes because the steps involved are simply too complex to process. This is why the big changes people “resolved” to implement at the New Year never happen. The kaizen philosophy of small steps works by prompting the brain to make small connections in nerve pathways one at a time. In this way, these small steps “trick” your brain to eventually accomplishing big changes one small improvement at a time.

Instead of dreaming about your perfect life and setting lofty, distant goals to get there, focus on what you can do today to move one step closer to the person who you want to be. Tomorrow, repeat and keep repeating continuously. After all, Kaizen is translated as “continuous improvement.”

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4 Responses to “How to Fail: make big changes”

  1. Cousin Saul says:
    October 22, 2009 at 10:52 am

    David,
    Nice column. Life is a series of small steps that eventually make up our journey.

  2. Judy Best says:
    October 22, 2009 at 11:35 am

    I love change, so it’s something I do a lot, sometimes really successfully, sometimes not so much. But, I think I agree if I made incremental changes rather than big changes, I’d probably realize success almost all the time.

  3. david says:
    October 22, 2009 at 11:47 am

    Great point. In a future How to Fail, I discuss Covey’s principle of “Begin with the end in mind.” It works best to take a big goal (the end) and break it down into small bits at various stages in the process of reaching the big goal.

  4. David Roman says:
    October 22, 2009 at 12:01 pm

    Like!
    Oh wait this isn’t Facebook… :P

    But seriously this is great commentary. Having trained in the martial arts for 15 years or so I see this in new students all the time. It’s even worse when seasoned students fall into the same pit…I know I do from time to time.