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Using systems and habits to improve your life is a proven method to succeed. It requires seeing the work as a system and then adjusting your thoughts and behaviors to be able to take advantage of your opportunities in life.
When you first start to use the systems and habits approach to improvement it takes time to really gain the benefits. Initially you put a lot of thought and effort into the small changes and adjustments that you make.
These changes probably won’t have much impact on your life. The reason is simple. You aren’t doing enough to have an impact.
Read MoreWe all want to be successful and happy. We have an innate drive towards those things but along the way, most people that I meet go astray.
In my opinion the reason is simple. It is something that I have experienced and came face-to-face with.
Read MoreFew companies have been studied for their ability to efficiently manufacture a product as Toyota. Companies everywhere use the innovative techniques from Toyota today but when Toyota started utilizing the techniques, most companies had no idea what they were doing.
You can gain a better understanding of how to improve by studying how others improve. Therefore, it can be beneficial to look to Toyota for inspiration into how we can improve our own lives.
Read MoreI find it funny how busy everyone is. Rather, I tend to find that everyone assumes that they are incredibly busy.
By some standards they are. There are things to do that take time. We have to shuffle the kiddos to piano and karate. We have to pay bills. We have to take the car for an oil change. All this while still working more than 40 hours a week and spending quality time with our family.
Read MoreMost people take the systems and structures in their life for granted. They view people as being in complete control of their behaviors so they assume that their behaviors are the result of specific thoughts.
To some extent this is true. We all have the ability to choose how we act and how we think throughout our lives. But if we stop there, we never realize how the systems in place have a profound impact on us.
Read MoreMost people have a difficult time seeing things from any perspective but their own. You can sense this when you have a conversation with them and they seem completely blind to any other possible opinion.
In politics we see this quite a bit in the United States. Some of this is understandable due to the fact that we have a split in political parties where most people fall into one of two parties that hold very opposing views on important issues.
Read MoreWe all know what it is like to be in a situation that is uncomfortable. Sometimes when we are in that situation, our mind and body are telling us that something is off and needs to change.
It could be a good sign that we are in dangerous territory and need to change. If we are hanging out with a new friend and they take us to a new bar that makes us feel uncomfortable due to the people or environment, maybe we should pay attention to that discomfort and make a change. That could be our intuition letting us know that danger is present.
Read MoreEvery now and then when I give a speech to a group about the systems and habits approach to improvement, I have someone approach me after the speech with a familiar refrain.
He or she will start by stating they enjoyed what I had to say. Then they would proceed to tell me about some person in their life that really should hear what I say because they make all sorts of mistakes.
Read MoreFor most of us, the things we want in life are things that we have to work hard for. If we want to be successful and happy we can achieve those goals, but it requires us to put in place the right steps to get us there.
It might seem as though successful people just happened to have the right skill and talent. For most people they view others as capable of reaching their goals, but not them.
Read MoreAs humans, we inherently use habit and routine to get through our days. I’ve heard psychologists state that 95% of the thoughts and behaviors in our typical day are habit. With this being so high, it is no wonder why change can be so difficult.
Because habit is so engrained, it is difficult to change. We can’t just wake up one day and suddenly change something that we have done the same way for the last 40 years.
Read MoreBusinesses are fairly straightforward endeavors from the standpoint of their main purpose. All businesses are made to profit. Even a non-profit business has to generate enough revenue to earn a profit and then distribute that profit to a cause. The more it does that, the more successful it is.
This makes things a little simpler when we evaluate a business. We can measure the revenue and the costs and determine how successful/profitable a business is.
Read MoreOne of the things that I have learned on the journey of constant improvement is that there is a lot of great insight in the world. The more I read the more I realize how there are some incredibly smart people in the world, willing to share their most prized knowledge.
For people like myself, we get hooked. We read and read and absorb as much as possible while gaining experience to help us form our own perspective based on many viewpoints.
Read MoreOne of the major pursuits of my life over the past 10 years has been to learn to let things happen more naturally. I see the value in learning to allow instead of control and the peace that it brings with it.
I first heard about the value of learning to allow and let go through Wayne Dyer. His books seemed to touch on this way of going through life in a flowing, peaceful, happy way that also brings with it success and achievement.
Read MoreThe world is complex. Every situation we find our self in has multiple variables that are adding to the eventual outcome. This means that it is easy to get overwhelmed by the complexity and fail to take appropriate action to move in the direction we desire.
Linear thinking tends to look at only two factors, such as cause and effect or beginning and end. When we think linearly we often can sense much of the system but try to keep our focus on the linear aspects as much as possible.
Read MoreI’m reading a great book right now called Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts by Annie Duke. Duke is a poker professional who goes into the way our mind thinks when faced with chance outcomes.
One section of the book dives into the idea of not knowing something. Duke explains that admitting when we don’t know something is frowned upon in most aspects of life, such as in our schooling. But admitting when we don’t know something is crucial to being able to make better decisions.
Read MoreBenjamin Franklin once said, “Diligence is the mother of good luck.” There is a saying that the harder one works, the more good luck they get. I’ve even heard someone once say that good luck is simply preparation meeting opportunity.
While these all may motivate us and convince us to keep working hard and doing our due diligence, the reality is that luck isn’t something that we can completely control.
Read MoreIf I were to offer you $100 today or if you wait one year I will pay you $250, which would you choose?
Most people would naturally choose the $100. We want the reward now, even if it is discounted compared to what we could get in the future.
Read MoreIf a friend came to you with an idea for a completely new type of website and said he was dropping out of a very prestigious college to chase his dream, what would you say?
Would you support him? Would you invest in him? Would you tell him he was crazy and that he should stick with college and do this as a hobby?
Read MoreIn systems thinking we are always looking for certain structures or templates. These tend to manifest in many ways and in many different systems.
One of these structures is the balancing feedback loop. The balancing feedback is set up to maintain equilibrium.
Read MoreMost people think that their passion is what is really important in life. They feel that following their passion they should be guaranteed success.
But this isn’t true. We aren’t entitled to success just because we are passionate. We assume this passion leads to constant motivation to keep moving forward to reach our goals.
Read More