How To Be 1% Better Every day

How To Be 1% Better Every day

 

Becoming a better you is never easy and often times it will feel like you are never going to get a hang of it. It happens to everyone though each person typically has their own personal demons to fight. Nonetheless, while you can fall off the wagon so many times, the good thing is that life is a journey and you will always be presented with an opportunity to improve or start afresh. Still, the biggest thing that makes people fail at improving their lives is that people look for hacks, tricks, and secrets. You need to know that overnight success is usually backed years of hard work. which the media does not like to report as it is not glamorous. This is why we at Vanquish Therapies always recommend that you become 1% better every day. We believe that incremental progress is the best way to improve yourself in all areas of your life.

The Kaizen

At Vanquish Therapies, we believe in the Kaizen concept. The Kaizen concept refers to a practice of continuous improvement through daily small incremental actions that become habits and ultimately result in success.
Kaizen is a Japanese term with an ancient and exotic feel to it though the concept was developed in the United States. The US government did not have the funds to build new armament factories to fight the Second World War. The higher-ups came up with a plan to make continuous small improvements to existing factories. The plan was so successful that it became a business philosophy. Post World War II the Americans introduced the concept to the Japanese that were also short of funds to retrofit their factories. The Japanese took the concept of incremental, continual small improvements and named it Kaizen. The Kaizen philosophy is the reason why Japanese automakers such as Toyota were soon started beating their American counterparts.

Why We Teach Incremental Improvement at Vanquish Therapies

So often people convince themselves that change can only be meaningful if it has some significant huge effect or outcome. Whether it be building a business, losing weight or saving money, most people place a lot of pressure on themselves to improve by such a huge margin that they often give up on the endeavour.

However, making 1% improvement daily improvements while not notable in any way often makes the bigger difference and is more sustainable in the long run. While the improvement is tiny over time it can be astounding when you do the math. For instance, if you get better by 1 percentage point every day for a year, you will be 37 times better at the end of the year. On the other hand, if you get worse by one percentage point every day, you will have a decline near to zero by the end of the year.

Your habits are the compound interest when it comes to self-improvement and hence small 1% improvements will compound a lot during the year. As long as you are consistent, the little effects of your habits will compound over the time and over several years the benefits of those little increments will be striking.

Why People Fail with Setting Goals

  • People Look for Magic Bullets – People are fond of looking for a radical idea and hence we will often look for hacks. For example, someone may spend too much time on blog articles something such as productivity. Oftentimes the magic bullet is being productive in doing the time tested, boring and mundane things.
  • They Aim for Radical Personal Change – Radical change is sometimes possible but the danger is that it is often unsustainable. The 1% path that we recommend is often more sustainable as you do not have to change so radically that sustaining your new habits is painful.
  • People Set Big Audacious Goals – Big goals tend to be overwhelming and will more often than not lead to inaction rather than inspiring action. This is why the 1% action plan works so well since you can set big goals but achieve them incrementally, which is significantly less stressful and frustrating.
  • They Make Self Improvement a Destination – At Vanquish therapies we always encourage our clients never to stop learning. We always encourage self-motivated, voluntary, ongoing and lifelong learning as the magic bullet for self-improvement.

How to Implement Kaizen in Your Life

1. Start Really Small – Regardless of how big your goals are, start very small and do 1% increments. For instance, you can start with just one pushup a day and in two months you will be doing 60. You can do this for practically anything from exercise, to reading to eating healthy to losing weight.

2. Do Just 1% Better Every Day – You have to practice infinite patience and not rush forward to make bigger leaps. Be slow steady and consistent and only take 1% increments every day for success.

3. Once you attain your objective, embark on a maintenance plan – Once you get to where you intend to keep on practicing the habit to maintain the benefits. For instance, if you have been reading for half an hour each day continue doing so indefinitely to maintain your new habits.

4. Do Not Change What is Working – If you have found something that already works, do it and improve on it every day even if it does not have the novelty and excitement of something new.

5. Avoid Tiny Losses – We teach that in many instances continual improvement is about doing fewer things wrong that more things right. For instance, missing fewer workouts will always be better in the long run as tiny losses have more compounding power and could easily get you off course as compared to the improvements brought about by small wins.

6. Measure Backward – Set your benchmarks on what has already happened. This encourages you on progress and makes the achievement of goals easier as compared to forward measurement. For instance, if you squatted 260 pounds last week, maybe this week go for 255 pounds.

Wrapping Up

At Vanquish Therapies we tell our clients that it does not matter whether you have been successful or unsuccessful in changing your habits. What matters is whether your habits are leading towards success or away from it. Your outcomes are a mirror of your habits and by changing them even if by 1% a day you can start seeing results on a smaller magnitude at first before the results become strikingly apparent. Just like compound interest, the incremental increases in good habits will compound 5 or ten years from now to leave you better off than you were. It is important to note that bad habits can make time your enemy while good habits will make time your friend.