Use this 3-step kaizen approach to help overcome creative resistance
The kaizen philosophy of creating good change with small continuous steps will help you overcome creative resistance, lower your shoulders, and create a life for you with less pressure.
Taking small steps might be hard to get your head around in the beginning.
You’re probably taking a lot of small steps to do stuff every day, without paying it much attention.
But there's a difference between going about your day-to-day life in the way you know best, and making a conscious decision to use small steps strategically to achieve a goal, or create a change in your life.
The difference is that you make a decision to live with intention in a gentle and kind way.
I’m a big believer in dreams and goals. But how to achieve them?
If you look at the end goal and the gap to where you are today is massive, it’s way easier to scroll Instagram.
Kaizen philosophy is a gentle, yet super effective way to close the gap to your goal, change, or dream.
You have to think small.
Not small in size of your dream, goal, ambitions, but small in the how you’re going to achieve it.
You’re talking small steps, asking small questions to activate your creativity, and celebrating small wins along your way to success.
Small, small, small.
“Confront the difficult when it is still easy; accomplish the great task by a series of small acts”
When you know a small step is small enough
You know your step is small enough when you think the step is a bit silly.
If you want to write a book, a small step can be to think about a character for 5 minutes.
If you want to tidy your desk, a small step can be to move a pencil.
Do you want to write a blog post? The first step is to open your computer.
Keep doing small things, taking small steps, solve small problems before they get big. Tidy up a little but often, instead of waiting until the mess is overwhelming.
Use this 3-step kaizen approach to help overcome creative resistance
The kaizen approach is about non-pressure and bypassing fear in the brain, so you can use this method to get still and listen to your body and inner voice.
Creative resistance is normal.
In fact, every time I decide to do anything creative, I skirt around it for ages. And I’m a creativity coach whose job it is to help you through creative resistance.
It’s the brain’s way of protecting you, not knowing writing a blog post isn’t dangerous. '
Instead of waiting for creative resistance to disappear (it’s not going to), it’s better to have a way to overcome it.
Enter the kaizen approach.
Step 1 to help you overcome creative resistance
Step one is about setting the stage.
You’ll be asking yourself a small question repeatedly to activate your subconscious, but you have to ask in the gentle spirit of kaizen.
It’s not good thinking you’ll get a positive result from speaking to yourself in a harsh, critical, or condemning tone.
So, make sure you do step two in a gentle and patient spirit.
Step 2 to help you move through resistance
This is the what you do to help you move through creative resistance:
You ask yourself a small question, in a gentle and patient spirit, that relates to overcoming resistance
Examples:
What would make it easy for me to show up for my creative project?
What could be a tiny, easy step to get started?
What is one small enjoyable step that is related to … (the thing that you resist)?
You pick just one question, otherwise you confuse your subconscious. Just one question, and then…
Step 3 in the process of overcoming resistance
For this process to work, you must ask your question at least once a day and wait patiently for your subconscious to come up with an answer.
The power of asking ourselves small questions lies in being patient and asking repeatedly.
As Robert Maurer writes in his book "The Spirit of Kaizen"
“Any small question especially asked repeatedly starts your brain’s own Google search.”
Other situations a kaizen small question can help you overcome resistance…
Kaizen keeps making my life better.
Every time I am doing something new, and I feel resistance - which is pretty much every time - I think of a small step I can do to begin.
It gets me started again and again.
Once you get this philosophy under your skin and use small steps to improve your life, or simply approach things you’ve always done, but with this new way of thinking, you’ll see it spread positive rings in the water.
You’ll lighten up a little because you’ll put less pressure on yourself.
Maybe you have a work situation where you would normally freak out, but now you take a step back and ask “What is one small step I can take to solve this?”
Perhaps you’ve been putting off decluttering your house because it’s a huge, overwhelming job. But now you can just think of a small step to start decluttering one corner of a room, or one drawer. Just remove one thing.
I use the small step approach to anything from cleaning the bathroom, cooking, tidying up, and to writing, doing website work… you name it.
The trick is, once you move though resistance and get started, very often you keep going.
That’s why it’s effective.
