Happiness Experiment No 7: A Perfect Day

Posted on June 22, 2012 by

What is your idea of a perfect day? Imagine a normal day which is not a holiday and take a look at what would constitute a perfect day for you. Look at the day in detail imagining what you would do from getting up in the morning to going to sleep at night. Live through the day in the present tense and in detail and write down your ideas. Think about what you are doing, where you are and who you are spending time with. How close are you to achieving this ideal day in your normal everyday life? What is one thing you can do today to get you closer to your ideal life? The first step to happiness is knowing what you want in life. Try this happiness experiment and see if you can come closer to living your perfect day every day of the week.

Posted by Shona Lockhart, 22nd June 2012

21 Pictures That Will Restore Your Faith In Humanity

Posted on June 21, 2012 by

As yesterday’s blog post was about practising acts of kindness I thought it would be a good idea to share this image series of 21 pictures that will restore your faith in humanity which were compiled by Jack Shepherd from Buzzfeed. Do you have any stories about acts of kindness which you would like to share?

1. This picture of Chicago Christians who showed up at a gay pride parade to apologize for homophobia in the Church.

(Michelle Gantner / Maladjusted Media)

… and the reaction from the parade.

2. This story about Japanese senior citizens who volunteered to tackle the nuclear crisis at Fukushima power station so that young people wouldn’t have to subject themselves to radiation.

3. This picture of two Norwegian guys rescuing a sheep from the ocean.

4. This sign at an awesome bookshop.

5. This poll about what Snooki should name her child.

6. The moment in which this Ohio athlete stopped to help an injured competitor across the finish line during a track meet.

17-year-old Meghan Vogel was in last place in the 3,200-meter run when she caught up to competitor Arden McMath, whose body was giving out. Instead of running past her to avoid the last-place finish, Vogel put McMath’s arm around her shoulders, carried her 30 meters, and then pushed her over the finish line before crossing it.

7. This exchange between a 3-year-old girl and a shopping center.

8. This note that was handed to a waiter along with a $20 bill by an elderly lady in his restaurant.

9. This sign at an awesome Subway restaurant.

10. This picture of a villager carrying stranded kittens to dry land during floods in Cuttack City, India.

11. This sign at an awesome drycleaner’s.

Elite Cleaners in Minneapolis helped over 2,000 unemployed workers that couldn’t afford dry cleaning. Owner Don Chapman estimated that it cost his company $32,000 dollars.

12. This photograph of a man giving his shoes to a homeless girl in Rio de Janeiro.

13. This picture of a firefighter administering Oxygen to a cat rescued from a house fire.

14. And this one.

15. This interaction between a Guatemalan girl and a tourist she just met.

16. This gesture from a neighbor.

17. These photos of two children collaborating to rescue a dog who had fallen into a ravine.

18. This note on a young family’s check.

19. This exchange between a protester and a soldier during a protest in Brazil.

20. These pictures of a man jumping into rough waters to rescue a stranger’s Shih Tzu in Melbourne.

Sue Drummond was walking her beloved Shih Tzu, Bibi, on a pier in Melbourne, when a fierce gust of wind picked him up and hurled him into the rough waters of the bay. A passerby, Raden Soemawinata, who happened to be on the pier that day to scatter his grandmother’s ashes, wasted no time in stripping down and diving into the bay to rescue the animal.

21. And this photograph of two best friends on a swing

Posted by Shona Lockhart, 21st June 2012

Status Anxiety – Part 7

Posted on June 20, 2012 by

In part 7 of Status Anxiety Alain de Botton looks at how living standards in the West have hugely improved in the last 200 years with major increases in life expectancy, economic opportunity and wealth generally. Despite these improvements it can be argued that we are much more status conscious and status anxious than we every were in the days of horse drawn carriages. Older societies despite all their disadvantages had one big advantage when it came to status. Before the mid 18th century, status was handed out in very particular ways: it did not matter what you did but who you were, who your parents were, what kind of background you had. People at the top of society had been handed their priveleges on a plate, secondly there was very little social mobility and thirdly people had very low expectations of the kind of life they could have. Under the old feudal system only a very few could aspire to wealth and fulfillment.

Alain de Botton claims that religion taught many people to accept their unequal treatment as part of a natural and unchangeable order. The English Christian medeival author John of Salisbury, who in 1159 published Policraticus, compared society to a body and used this analogy to justify a system of natural inequality. The ruler was like a head, the parliament like the lungs, the treasury like a stomach, the army like the hands, the working classes like the feet and the peasantry the toes. Behind this rather insulting metaphor lay the idea that everyone in society had been accorded an unalterable role.

Gradually in the middle of the 18th century a way of distributing status emerged, a way that gave hope to millions of people and dramatically changed their lives but which at the same time also brought new levels of anxiety. This new system was called meritocracy. Alain de Botton travels to America to see how the creation of the United States in 1776 fundamentally changed the way status was distributed. The constitution of this new country was based on an idea which was to affect almost every aspect of life right across the Western world – the idea of meritocracy.

Thomas Jefferson drafted these words in June 1776:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit if happiness”

Part 7 of this series continues to look at how this Declaration of Independence and the ideals of meritocracy led to the belief in the American Dream – that anyone with enough talent is capable of achieving anything. An aristocracy of talent rather than birth right emerged.

Posted by Shona Lockhart, 20th June 2012.

Happiness Experiment No 6: Acts of Kindness

Posted on June 20, 2012 by

“Thousands of candles can be lit from one single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.” Buddha

When is the last time you helped someone? Whether it was a large gesture or something small that brightened another person’s day, how did it make you feel?

The psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky instructed participants in a study to to practice acts of kindness during each week either for people they knew personally or for strangers. The acts of kindness could be carried out either openly or secretly and could be either spontaneous or planned. The study demonstrated that the participants enjoyed a significant increase in their well-being. The participants who were asked to constantly vary their acts of kindness and to carry them out on one single day of the week rather than spreading them over the week benefitted the most.

Try out this happiness experiment for yourself: on any day this week perform at least 5 acts of kindness beyond what you normally do. You will see that you derive so much benefit from your generous actions that it could be argued that there is no more selfish act than a generous act. Have fun with this happiness experiment and give it a try – you will be amazed at how it makes you feel. You can watch this wonderful short video by Life Vest Inside for inspiration.

Posted by Shona Lockhart, 20th June 2012

The Amazingly Positive Life of Michael J. Fox.

Posted on June 19, 2012 by

“People talk about me being a paragon of optimism and hope and all that stuff. I have a really blessed life, I have an amazing life.” Michael J. Fox

In this feature for ABC News published on 18th June 2012, Russell Goldman looks at the actor Michael J. Fox who I mentioned in a previous post as being a poster boy for optimism. Read the article and watch his interview with ABC’s news anchor Diane Sawyer who featured him as her “Person of the Week” in her Friday night World News programme.

Michael J. Fox Looks Past Stem Cells in Search For Parkinson’s Cure

Michael J. Fox, whose turn from Parkinson’s disease patient to scientific crusader made him one of the country’s most visible advocates for stem cell research, now believes the controversial therapy may not ultimately yield a cure for his disease, he told ABC’s Diane Sawyer in an exclusive interview.

There have been “problems along the way,” Fox said of stem cell studies, for which he has long advocated. Instead, he said, new drug therapies are showing real promise and are “closer today” to providing a cure for Parkinson’s disease, a degenerative illness that over time causes the body to become rigid and the brain to shut down.

“Stem cells are an avenue of research that we’ve pursued and continue to pursue but it’s part of a broad portfolio of things that we look at. There have been some issues with stem cells, some problems along the way,” said Fox, who suffers from the diseases’ telltale tics and tremors.

“It’s not so much that [stem cell research has] diminished in its prospects for breakthroughs as much as it’s the other avenues of research have grown and multiplied and become as much or more promising. So, an answer may come from stem cell research but it’s more than likely to come from another area,” he said.

Tune in to “World News with Diane Sawyer” Friday at 6:30 p.m. E.T. to see more of Diane Sawyer’s interview with Michael J. Fox

Fox, who recently appeared in episodes of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and “The Good Wife,” has dedicated himself to finding a cure for Parkinson’s, the disease with which he was diagnosed in 1991.

Fox said he still strongly believes in stem cell research and government support of those studies, praising ongoing research at New York’s Memorial Sloan-Kettering Hospital. When asked about earlier criticism he received from conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh about his advocacy, Fox said it only “sharpens your resolve.”

Scientists are conducting research and looking for a cure on multiple fronts, Fox said, including drug therapies, experimental surgeries, and developing tests to help make earlier diagnoses.

To that end, his Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, the largest private funder of Parkinson’s disease research worldwide, has recently launched an online initiative to increase studies across the country by pairing patients with clinical trials in their areas.

The Fox Trial Finder (Visit FoxTrialFinder.org for more info on clinical trial participation) harnesses the power of the Internet to find patients and, based on their profile of symptoms, pair them with research scientists conducting clinical trials.

Thirty percent of all clinical trials fail to recruit a single subject, according to the foundation’s web site, and many more, some 85 percent, are delayed because scientists are unable to find enough participants.

“People can fill out a form anonymously… and then we can let them know about… clinical trials happening in their area,” Fox said.

Some 200 trials are currently seeking recruits through the website, but one of the most promising will “try to find a biomarker for Parkinson’s, which is really important,” Fox said.

By the time Fox was diagnosed 20 years ago, he said, 80 percent of the dopamine cells in his brain – neurons instrumental in sending the signals that control movement – were depleted.

“We have no way to identify the disease before symptoms appear. If we can target progress along the way, we can arrest progress and eliminate the possibility of symptoms,” he said, adding that this area of research is “the most exciting.”

Fox, an actor who grew up in front of the camera on the 1980s sitcom “Family Ties” and starred in the “Back to the Future” film franchise, worried about the future of his career after announcing his diagnosis in 1998 and leaving the hit show “Spin City.”

In the years since, he has led the Fox Foundation, which has donated more than $300 million to Parkinson’s research. In recent months, however, he has returned to acting more regularly, the result he says, of a new drug regimen that helps control his tics, or dyskinesia.

“I kind of stumbled onto a new combination of meds for what’s called dyskinesia… Now I thought, there’s no reason not to work so I started to accept more work. Larry David called and had a terrific idea and the ‘Good Wife’ is such a terrific show,” he said of his decisions to appear on HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and the CBS series “The Good Wife.”

Fox said that each morning he is uncertain exactly how his symptoms will affect him that day. Some mornings he can delay taking his first dose of medicine for a few hours, other days he expects a greater challenge.

“I don’t write off the day ahead of time because of that, it just means it’s going be tougher sledding,” he said.

Having struggled with the disease for years himself, Fox understands its devastating effects and the physical challenges it presents.

He said it was an abiding sense of optimism, a topic on which he has written two books, that allows him to carry on, even on the most difficult days. In 2009, he traveled to the Asian country Bhutan, which emphasizes happiness over productivity, and said he found his symptoms diminished there.

“People talk about me being a paragon of optimism and hope and all that stuff,” he said. ”I have a really blessed life, I have an amazing life.”

Posted by Shona Lockhart, 19th June 2012

How to rewire your brain to be more optimistic

Posted on June 19, 2012 by

This article by Deborah Kotz was published in the Boston Globe on 11th June 2012. The article looks at a fascinating book written by Professor Elaine Fox which looks at both the pessimistic and optimistic states of mind.

How to rewire your brain to be more optimistic

Winston Churchill, Britain’s prime minister during World War II, once described success as the “ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.” He might have been more than a little prescient because researchers have since found that optimism plays a key role in achievement in life — as well as increasing our odds of living longer and healthier.

But where scientists once thought that having a sunny outlook, or a rainy one, was set in stone on the day we were conceived, the latest research suggests that genes play only a 30 to 40 percent role in our outlook and that, with a little training, our brains have the ability to shift over time from a more negative outlook to a more positive one.

A book published last week provides a road map for rewiring the brain and redefines what optimism is. “It’s not just positive thinking but positive actions,” said Oxford University cognitive neuroscientist Elaine Fox, author of “Rainy Brain, Sunny Brain.” Persistence is key: Rather than sitting and passively waiting for life to happen, optimistic people take steps to implement their goals.

Optimists “literally don’t give up as easily and this links to greater success in life,” said Fox.

Clearly, we need our darker side to pull us back from ultimately fruitless pursuits, but overall, we’re better off believing that we can surmount any challenge life throws our way.

If you’re the sort to see life as one bad roll of the dice after another, Fox said there are several things you can do to increase optimism. “Research is encouraging. We know that we can change how the brain circuits function to change a person’s outlook, but a person needs to put a lot of effort into it.”

Someone whose severe pessimism causes anxiety disorder or clinical depression, for example, might need to see a professional for cognitive behavioral therapy to learn how to challenge and dispel negative thoughts that prevent positive action.

Those who have milder pessimistic tendencies can try the following to shift to a sunnier outlook.

1. Make a daily tally of negative and positive events. Create a list — starting from when you wake up in the morning — of all the little things that go right and all those things that go wrong, from burning the toast at breakfast to running into an old friend on the train to work. “People prone to feeling depressed and down tend to be surprised at how many good things happened to them that day,” said Fox. “Something as simple as making a list can help people gradually, over time, notice the good things when they happen.”

2. Aim for three positive experiences for every one negative one. Most optimists engage in three enjoyable activities for every one they wish they could avoid, whether it’s drinking their favorite brand of coffee, taking a yoga class, or watching a short clip online of their favorite movie just before they have to tackle that dreaded phone call to an irritated relative. The key is to build things into your day that you look forward to and to cut back on things, when possible, that you don’t.

3. Exercise every day. Getting some sort of physical activity every day works like a natural antidepressant to boost your mood, giving you a more positive feeling about life, thanks to an elevation of certain brain chemicals such as serotonin and BDNF. Yes, you should engage in activities that are pleasurable — take a dance class if you hate jogging — so you don’t violate step No. 2.

4. Engage in mindfulness meditation. Learning to be present in the moment can help build regions of the brain responsible for mediating your emotional states, research has shown. Those who practice mindfulness tend to feel happier and more at ease in life simply from focusing their brains on the present rather than mulling over the past or fretting about the future.

This article by Deborah Kotz was published in the Boston Globe on 11th June 2012.

This short video clip with the author, pyschologist and neuroscientist Elaine Fox, explains the background to her book. The video refers to the remarkable optimism of actor Michael. J. Fox who remains irrepressibly upbeat despite coping with early onset Parkinson’s disease. I recently read his book Always Looking Up and can’t recommend it highly enough – he is truly inspirational.

Here is what Michael J.Fox has to say about Elaine Fox’s book:

“Every day I send my kids out the door to school with this admonition, “you can choose to be happy.” More often than not, they roll their eyes, but in Rainy Brain, Sunny Brain Elaine Fox (no relation) offers a scientific argument for my contention. After much research, and in comprehensive, but comprehensible detail, Professor Fox provides a mental map to the sunny side of the street. For optimists and pessimists alike, this fascinating book is a must read, (and I’m not just saying that because I’m in it).”

Michael J. Fox, Manhattan, New York

Take a look at this great video clip and visit www.rainybrainsunnybrain.com to find out more. I for one am ordering the book on Kindle as we speak as it sounds fascinating.

Posted by Shona Lockhart, 19th June 2012

Status Anxiety – Part 6

Posted on June 18, 2012 by

Alain de Botton postulates that the search for status is linked to something which is as essential to us as light, food and water. Once we work out how central the need for love is a lot of things become clearer, from why we go shopping to why we sometimes kill one another. Much of the reason why we go shopping is unconnected to any urgent material need. We often shop in order to persuade the world we are worthwhile, interesting people. We often shop for emotional rather than practical reasons. A lot of consumption is about acquiring status symbols, material objects whose primary use is psychological and which signal to the world that we are worthy of dignity and respect.

Why do we shop?

Thorstein Veblen, an American sociologist and the man responsible for the term status symbols wrote a witty book The Theory of the Leisure Class in 1899. Having observed the rich at leisure he became fascinated by how people acquire certain luxury goods to symbolise their high status. Many clothes were deliberately designed to show that people didn’t need to work and in fact couldn’t do so in clothes which were highly impractical.

Alain de Botton looks at why we are interested in acquiring luxury cars and what these cars say about us. He argues that perhaps it is those who strive the hardest to be successful who are most haunted by feelings of failure. Scratch the surface of almost anyone who has made it to the top of their chosen field and you will find an unusually viscous fear of being a loser. What need would there be to be so impressive if their wasn’t a fear of being the opposite? There is a sad emotionaly deprived side to the purchase of luxury cars sales he claims. People are attracted to status symbols because they want to feel valued. Rather than a tale of greed, the history of luxury goods could more accurately be read as a record of emotional trauma. It is the legacy of people who felt pressured by the insensitivity of others to impress them with material objects. The amount of love you receive from the world is dependent on the amount of status symbols you can wield.

Part 6 of this series goes to demonstrate how our extreme touchiness about our status can lead to duelling and tragically even death.

Posted by Shona Lockhart on 18th June 2012

Status Anxiety – Part 5

Posted on June 18, 2012 by

Part 5 of the series Status Anxiety looks at the rewards we seek in society. We look for rewards in terms of promotion, money and buying a nicer house. For most of us the reward we really want is attention.

Alain de Botton investigates how our anxieties about status affect every aspect of our every day lives. We worry about being made redundant and how it will affect the way others see us, we worry about passed over for promotion, we worry about being kept waiting, we worry about our colleagues and even our close friends doing better than us.

However what gives us status in a given society keeps changing throughout history in the 21st century our status comes from fashion, business, sport or all three. Although the ways we attain high status have varied throughout history the consequences of high status are familiar accross time and it comes down to being treated well, being treated with respect and with a kind of love.

It is common to assume that the worst thing about low paid work is the money just as the money is the best thing about highly paid work. There is another way of looking at this isue which puts status at the heart of the subject. It could be argued that what make low paid work really distasteful comes down to how one is treated and it isn’t about the money per se, it is about the lack of status involved. Many low paid jobs leave us feeling as though we don’t properly exist. No cares who we are and what we think. Conversely part of what keeps people working even after they have made a lot of money is the respect they receive from others, they are looked up to, held in high esteem and even photographed on the way to the shops.

The philosopher Adam Smith questioned the point of the rat race in his famous book “The Wealth of Nations”.

“What is all the toil and bustle for? What are people aiming at with their ambitions and their frenzied pursuits of wealth, power and pre-eminence? Are they looking to supply their basic needs? No. The wages of the poorest labourer can supply those. What then are they after? They want to be treated well, they want to be attended to, to be taken notice of with sympathy, kindness and approval.”

It is agonising to compare ourselves with people we consider our equals i.e. returning to a school reunion can trigger huge amounts of anxiety. “Every time a friend of mine succeeds, a small part of me dies” Gore Vidal famously said.

Watch this short video to see what further conclusions Alain de Botton comes to about our need for love and status.

Posted by Shona Lockhart on 18th June 2012

Happiness Experiment no 5: Three Wise Things

Posted on June 17, 2012 by

Happy Experiment No 5 comes from Tim Le Bon’s recent Wise Wednesday article called Making Positive Psychology Wiser and is a philosophical version of Happy Experiment No 2: Three Good Things. In order to inspire you here are video clips from three wise men past and present.

Three Wise Things

Each night for one week, write down three ways in which you or someone you know acted wisely that day. The things don’t have exhibit the wisdom of King Solomon – they just have to be things where someone showed good judgement. In addition to writing down three wise things, write down what made these actions wise?

The wisdom of Will Smith

The wisdom of Abraham Lincoln

The wisdom of Confucious

Posted by Shona Lockhart, 17th June 2012

Kaizen: Tiny Steps to Happiness

Posted on June 17, 2012 by

This article by Nicholas Ritchey appeared recently in the Psychology of Wellbeing blog and as it fits in nicely with the recent series of posts looking at how to bring about change I decided to feature in in The Happiness Experiment. If you are still resisting the changes you need to make to be happier this article teaches you how to accomplish your goals one tiny step at a time.

Kaizen: Accomplishing Big Goals with Tiny Steps

One Small Step by Aldo Aldoz

If you’re like me, you may have a book inside you just waiting to be written.

Or, it may be something else like painting a picture, picking up a musical instrument, or getting into the gym regularly. But since I don’t know your story, I can only tell you my own; and my goal was a book.

I knew I had at least one book in me, but when would I ever find the time to write it?

This article shares the solution to the problem of never having enough time to do what you want, for making procrastination a thing of the past, and perhaps making your life a bit simpler in the process.

Prepare yourself for the Japanese Art of Kaizen!

“I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once,

but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times”

-Bruce Lee

What is Kaizen?

Kaizen is the Japanese art of relatively small, continuous improvements.

This art has been taught and successfully applied at all levels of human functioning, from the lives of individuals to standard practice at multinational corporations.

Why is Kaizen powerful?

There are several reasons Kaizen is extremely powerful:

1. It bypasses the fear response; effectively putting an end to procrastination
2. Changes become habits, and habits produce permanent results
3. Small changes, made continually over time, make huge impacts

Make the task so small, you cannot fail.

By making changes to your life, a procedure or system that are so small you cannot fail, there is no need for procrastination. For example, if you want to learn a new language, study 1 word a day. If this is still intimidating, just decide to spend 5 minutes looking for a dictionary online. Make the changes or tasks so easy, you cannot fail. Once you’ve mastered these small changes, you can always make them a little more challenging, as long as they’re still so small that you cannot fail.

Achievement by Edgar Zuniga Jr

A step in the right direction every day is better than no steps at all.

When applying Kaizen, it is best to make changes where habits exist. So if you want to floss your teeth more often, put some dental floss next to your toothbrush, and decide to floss just one tooth before you brush your teeth. This may seem silly at first, but try it. After doing this last year, I went from rarely flossing, to flossing my teeth daily; just like the doctor recommends… and it started with one tooth per brushing.

Kaizen is also powerful when applied to habits or processes because these are already established and permanent. Instead of deciding to join and lose 20lbs at the gym, decide to do a behavior that will take you to your goal, and then take the first step. This may be as simple as putting on your shoes in the morning and walking down to the mailbox and back each morning as soon as you take off your pajamas (adding to an existing habit), or to your apartment door and back, or even just getting dressed, stepping out the door, and coming back in. Whatever your level of comfort, avoid the fear response, and decide to make the small new changes permanent.

Better to work up to 30 minutes of daily walking than to hit the gym hard for a month, lose 20lbs and gain 25lbs back.

Small changes, made continually over time, can have a major impact on your life, job, health, relationships, etc. If you made a habit of writing down 3 things you’re grateful before bed each night, how many more blessings might you notice in the next week, month, year or lifetime? If you start with walking to your mailbox every morning, and that develops into 3 sessions at the gym each week for the next 40 years – how will your quality of life compare with those who didn’t start this small, continual process of improvement?

Master a small change, and then make a small change to improve upon it. As changes that bypass the fear response, they actually get implemented. And since these are changes or additions to habits, they give permanent results.

Like raindrops pelting a snow-covered mountain, your small actions can cause an avalanche.

How can I apply Kaizen in my life?

The possibilities for application are endless, but here are a few questions that may help direct the process:

What result would you like to get?
What behaviors do you need to master to get that result?
What’s the biggest little thing you could do to start forming one of these behaviors?

Remember, your changes should be so small that you cannot possibly fail!

Let’s look at writing a book, something I used to struggle with.

Desired Result: a finished book

Behaviors Needed: daily writing, research or editing

Kaizen: write 1 sentence each day

To finish my first book, I knew I had to do a lot of writing, researching and editing. It was a daunting task, but something I wanted to do for several years. The result of doing nothing for several years was nothing. So when I learned about Kaizen, I decided to write just a sentence a day, and see how it went.

The Result…

It’s been 4 months since I started the habit and I’ve written 5 short books (~50 pages each). I encouraged my friend to do the same and just got his 2nd book published yesterday on Amazon. So far that’s 3 books online and 5 in the queue for publishing.

It Doesn’t Stop There…

Since first learning about Kaizen, I have applied it quite literally to every area of my life. From morning showers, to making a hybrid workstation I can both stand and sit at when I’m at home.

What started off as getting my first book written has turned into development of several websites, a weekly podcast, a member’s site, a teleseminar, 10k less in student debt, more hours in the gym, meditating in the mountains, and reading classical literature by the great stoics (Marcus Aurelius is my newest hero).

An excellent example of Kaizen that you can look at is a website I just started in February using the Kaizen approach – AcePositive.com. My small goal is just 3 posts a day, or 1095 per year. In the relatively new field of positive psychology, I figure that’s enough to make it one of the best resources on the Internet in a very short amount of time… and all it takes is a small amount of daily effort.

Furthermore, it is so small that it not only circumvents the fear response, but allows me to connect with people I adore and give back to a community I love.

The Snowball Effect: In less than 3 months, I have made over 600 posts on AcePositive… an average of about 20 posts a day.

When you take fear out of the equation and make good habits sticky, the results can be astounding!

But enough of my successes!

It’s time for you to go out there and learn the joys of Kaizen! Start mastering the art of small, continuous improvements today and it will serve you well for a lifetime.

If you have any questions at all, just want to say hi or have a Kaizen story to share, post a comment below. I don’t bite, and love to connect with other people who actively pursue their dreams.

—

References and recommended reading:

Maurer, R. (2004). One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way. Workman Publishing Company.

Additional Resources:

Use of Kaizen in Everyday Life: http://www.simposo.com/Kaizen
Case Study – Productivity Increases 400%
http://md1.csa.com/partners/viewrecord.php?requester=gs&collection=TRD&recid=330075CI&q=kaizen&uid=791759275
Google Scholar Search for Kaizen:
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=kaizen&hl=en&btnG=Search&as_sdt=1%2C5&as_sdtp=on
Presentation – Six Sigma vs. Kaizen:
http://www.slideshare.net/pgkrish/six-sigma-vs-kaizen
Presentation – Kaizen CPI (Continual Process of Improvement):
http://www.slideshare.net/anandsubramaniam/kaizen-continuous-process-improvement-cpi
Personal Blog: http://www.NicholasRitchey.com
Facebook: http://www.Facebook.com/RitcheyOnline/
Twitter: http://www.Twitter.com/NicholasRitchey/

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