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Tuesday, October 09, 2007

Taking small steps to success and prosperity

Lately, have been reading One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way. This is an interesting and inspiring book which urges people to turn their lives around by taking small steps.

For example, if some one's having a weight problem, then instead of hiring a trainer or getting a surgery, they should take small steps such as removing one unhealthy item from one's diet one step at a time. The author. Robert Maurer, himself turned his life around by losing 45 pounds in 18 months. He did that by taking the small step of throwing out the first french fry on his plate. With time, the number of fries and other food he threw out kept increasing, and those small acts led him to lose significant weight over time.

I found the book very motivating. It continuously reinforces the notion that small, incremental steps can have a big impact over time. I myself have been trying to put the ideas into my personal life. With two small kids, life's always busy. There's always tons of work but rather than getting anxious or trying to do everything in one day, I try to spread out the work over few days which has made the work load much more manageable.

Am sure, the same philosophy can be applied in the area of personal finance. For example, if a person is having problem saving money, then he/she can start saving the first dollar and then gradually keep the momentum going. As the amount of savings increases, often times, the person becomes more encouraged and excited, and that gets the ball rolling. Similarly, if it's hard to find 30-minutes for exercise, then just try to spend just 2-3 minutes a day and keep the process going. Overtime such small changes can produce measurable, positive results.

The reason baby steps often catapult many people to a greater success is because they help overcome the inertia which keeps most people in their status quo condition and prevents them from at least taking a shot at their goals. However, once they start the process by taking even a small step, most of the time they find that whatever goal they are trying to reach, it isn't that tough and that sets the momentum for further progress. I remember in school, during my earlier semesters, I always could find umpteen reasons for not doing the term papers/projects until just before the deadline. However, in the later semesters, I realized that once I took the minor step of selecting the term paper topic, and then spent just 10-15 minutes every day, the term paper/project was completed quickly, preventing the anxiety that in the earlier semesters would be there at the back of my mind. This book reinforces similar ideas with different examples and is a good read.

For a related post, see:

Baby steps count

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posted by Ruby @ 1:25 AM

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