Name: One Small Step Can Change Your Life
ISBN: 9780761129233

Robert Maurer

A guide to incorporating the ancient Japanese practice of Kaizen into everyday life demonstrates how small changes can have great consequences, and how gradual, gentle steps can eventually lead to worthwhile goals.

The Kaizen Way

One Small Step Can Change Your Life

Lee Herman

Kaizen is an approach to making changes by small steps - teeny, tiny ones if necessary. The idea is to overcome nature resistance, fear, procrastination and other obstacles to dramatic change by making changes so small they don't provoke fear or resistance. By taking the small steps, repeating them for a while if necessary to start a habit, the difficulty of starting on the path to change goes away because the small steps have started you on the path to change. 

An easy read, accessible and more matter of fact than preachy (a danger for books on self-improvement). While it's simple, there is depth to the suggested approach and the author cites numerous examples of personal and organizational change he has seen and/or helped bring about with these methods.

Improve your life fearlessly with this essential guide to kaizen—the art of making great and lasting change through small, steady steps. Written by psychologist and kaizen expert Dr. Robert Maurer, One Small Step Can Change Your Life is the simple but potent guide to easing into new habits—and turning your life around. Learn how to overcome fear and procrastination with his 7 Small Steps—including how to Think Small Thoughts, Take Small Actions, and Solve Small Problems—to steadily build your confidence and make insurmountable-seeming goals suddenly feel doable. The science is irrefutable: Small steps circumvent our brains’ built-in resistance to new behaviors. Throughout this book, Dr. Maurer also shows how to visualize virtual change so that real change can come more easily. Why small rewards lead to big returns. And how great discoveries are made by paying attention to the little details most of us overlook. His simple regiment is your path to continuous improvement for anything from losing weight to quitting smoking, paying off debt, or conquering shyness and meeting new people. Rooted in the two-thousand-year-old wisdom of the Tao Te Ching—“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”—here is the way to change your life without fear, without failure, and start on a new path of easy, continuous improvement.

Lewis Smith

I haven’t actually read this one, I listened to the audiobook, which it seems is so different from the print version that it probably shouldn’t have been allowed to use the same name. 

Anyway, the audiobook is bad, the actual book is supposed to be good, but I can’t rate it. 

Only added a rating and this review as a reminder to myself.

Mika

Quick read. Loved the actionable steps and anecdotes — the concept is not too intimidating; easy to implement, too!

I've always read and heard about "kaizen" but never really understood its essence until I read this book.

Peter Polgar

Though the core idea can be summarized on a single page, this book adds some nice details and useful tips how to use kaizen in your everyday life. Probably also useful for leaders and coaches, as most of the examples are about how the author helped others to achieve their goals.

One Small Step Can Change Your Life The Kaizen Way

Reviews

Highlights